A Secure and Reliable Handoff Authentication Protocol with Batch Verification for Internet of Things Environment

With the advancement of 5G mobile telecommunication, various IoT (Internet of Things) devices communicate massive amounts of data by being connected to wireless networks. Since this wireless communication is vulnerable to hackers via data leakage during communication, the transmitted data should be encrypted through block ciphers to protect the data during communication. In addition, in order to encrypt the massive amounts of data securely, it is essential to apply one of secure mode of operation. Among them, CTR (CounTeR) mode is the most widely used in industrial applications. However, these IoT devices have limited resources of computing and memory compared to typical computers, so that it is challenging to process cryptographic algorithms that have computation-intensive tasks in IoT devices at high speed. Thus, it is required that cryptographic algorithms are optimized in IoT devices. In other words, optimizing cryptographic operations on these IoT devices is not only basic but also an essential effort in order to build secure IoT-based service systems. For efficient encryption on IoT devices, even though several ARX (Add-Rotate-XOR)-based ciphers have been proposed, it still necessary to improve the performance of encryption for smooth and secure IoT services. In this article, we propose the first parallel implementations of CTR mode of ARX-based ciphers: LEA (Lightweight Encryption Algorithm), HIGHT (high security and light weight), and revised CHAM on the ARMv8 platform, a popular microcontroller in various IoT applications. For the parallel implementation, we propose an efficient data parallelism technique and register scheduling, which maximizes the usage of vector registers. Through proposed techniques, we process the maximum amount of encryption simultaneously by utilizing all vector registers. Namely, in the case of HIGHT and revised CHAM-64/128 (resp. LEA, revised CHAM-128/128, and CHAM-128/256), we can execute 48 (resp. 24) encryptions simultaneously. In addition, we optimize the process of CTR mode by pre-computing and using the intermediate value of some initial rounds by utilizing the property that the nonce part of CTR mode input is fixed during encryptions. Through the pre-computation table, CTR mode is optimized up until round 4 in LEA, round 5 in HIGHT, and round 7 in revised CHAM. With the proposed parallel processing technique, our software provides 3.09%, 5.26%, and 9.52% of improved performance in LEA, HIGHT, and revised CHAM-64/128, respectively, compared to the existing parallel works in ARM-based MCU. Furthermore, with the proposed CTR mode optimization technique, our software provides the most improved performance with 8.76%, 8.62%, and 15.87% in LEA-CTR, HIGHT-CTR, and revised CHAM-CTR, respectively. This work is the fastest implementation of CTR mode on ARMv8 architecture to the best of our knowledge.

As location-aware IoT (Internet of Things) devices intend to spread across almost every application, IoT devices are going to require different GNSS (Global Navigation Satellite System) receiver design requirements. To deliver on IoT opportunities, system architects and designers need to look carefully at every aspect of system design and architecture to be able to enable the full potential of the IoT era. IoT devices are equipped with different connectivity sensors that can provide a reliable integrated location-awareness solution. IoT devices are mainly relying on GNSS chip to deliver a service when no other RF signal is available. Hence, GNSS chip is expected to maintain a robust and reliable performance even in harsh environment. The harsh environment includes multipath environment, NLOS (Non-Line of Sight) GNSS signal reception, weak GNSS signal power reception, superimposed motion (e.g., arm swing, floating platform fluctuation …etc.), operation under freezing temperature, and interference. The targeted low-cost system design along with the expected harsh operational environment derived us to face exceptional GNSS signal reception condition. This paper discusses lessons learned, and challenges faced signal acquisition, reacquisition, and tracking for several IoT applications. Different operational modes are also explored to accommodate various use cases scenarios for several IoT applications. These different power consumption operational modes allow the GNSS chip to achieve an Ultra-low power consumption which indeed required for IoT applications. This paper provides an overview about the addressed GNSS chip fabricated in a 28nm FD-SOI process. We demonstrate a system performance and power consumption comparison of this chip along with other state-of-the-art GNSS chip. We compare the positioning performance for this device alongside another state-of-the-art GNSS modules and Novatel’s tightly coupled GNSS/INS (Inertial Navigation System) reference solution at numerous scenarios ranging from walking, running, and driving at several sites under different environment.

The correct implementation and behavior of Internet of Things (IoT) applications are seldom investigated in the literature. This paper shows how the simulation mechanism can be integrated well into an IoT application development platform for correct implementation and behavior investigation. We use an IoT application development platform called IoTtalk as an example to describe how the simulation mechanism called SimTalk can be built into this IoT platform. We first elaborate on how to implement the simulator for an input IoT device (a sensor). Then we describe how an output IoT device (an actuator) can be simulated by an animated simulator. We use a smart farm application to show how the simulated sensors are used for correct implementation. We use applications including interactive art (skeleton art and water dance) and the pendulum physics experiment as examples to illustrate how IoT application behavior investigation can be achieved in SimTalk. As the main outcome of this paper, the SimTalk simulation codes can be directly reused for real IoT applications. Furthermore, SimTalk is integrated well with an IoT application verification tool in order to formally verify the IoT application configuration. Such features have not been found in any IoT simulators in the world.

Wireless devices in Internet of Things (IoT) applications, such as wireless sensors and Radio Frequency Identifications (RFIDs), are faced with challenges of heavy computation tasks and limited energy, which can be solved by the importation of mobile edge computing (MEC) and wireless power transfer (WPT) techniques. As MEC can effectively enhance computation capability, and the wireless power transfer can ensure a sustainable supply of energy, it has drawn significant research interest in IoT applications. In this paper, we will study the resource allocation problem in the wireless-powered MEC system for IoT applications with one access point (AP) and many other wireless devices, and propose a Stackelberg dynamic game model to obtain the optimal allocated resource for the nodes in the IoT environment. The AP is a wireless power source that can charge wireless devices based on wireless power transfer techniques. The AP is also integrated with a MEC server that can carry out computation tasks that offload from wireless devices. The wireless devices can use the harvested energy to execute and offload computation tasks to the AP. Based on the proposed game model, the AP and wireless devices can control their optimal transmit power for energy transfer, and computation tasks offloading to the AP, respectively. The numerical simulation results show the correctness and effectiveness of the proposed model.

The Internet of Things (IoT) is a concept that is transforming our everyday life. Because of its capacity to change people's lives, it has become a vital element of our lives. IoT devices are being used by an increasing number of businesses because they provide new opportunities for wearable devices, home appliances, and healthcare. With all of these possibilities, the risks associated with IoT security are increasing. One of the most challenging aspects of any IoT application is device identification. Things in the IoT share and process data without the need for human interaction. As a result of their total authority, these entities must authenticate and recognize one another effectively. Failure to legitimately authenticating the IoT devices can make them vulnerable to a number of assaults such as DDoS and replay attacks. It is nearly hard to develop an effective authentication system due to the size and other characteristics of IoT. Although a lot of work has been done on this issue, the majority of these solutions rely on a centralized system. These centralized systems are segregated and incompatible with one another, making information exchange between them impossible. In addition, once a centralized authority is attacked, the user's privacy can be exposed easily. Proof of security, decentralization, and anonymity characteristics of blockchain can help address these issues. With blockchain technology applied to IoT systems, obstacles to IoT architecture development and security can be overcome. This paper, therefore, focuses on covering current advancements made in the application of blockchain for authentication in IoT. There is a lack of survey papers on the use of blockchain for authentication in IoT this paper will serve as an aide. This paper will also add to the knowledge of researchers who are interested in IoT security.

The Internet of Things (IoT) brings internet connectivity to everyday devices. These devices generate a large volume of information that needs to be transmitted to the nodes running the IoT applications, where they are processed and used to make some output decisions. On the one hand, the quality of these decisions is typically affected by the freshness of the received information, thus requesting frequent updates from the IoT devices. On the other hand, the severe energy, memory, processing, and communication constraints of IoT devices and networks pose limitations in the frequency of sensing and reporting. So, it is crucial to minimize the energy consumed by the device for sensing the environment and for transmitting the update messages, while taking into account the requirements for information freshness. Edge-caching can be effective in reducing the sensing and the transmission frequency; however, it requires a proper refreshing scheme to avoid staleness of information, as IoT applications need timeliness of status updates. Recently, the Age of Information (AoI) metric has been introduced: it is the time elapsed since the generation of the last received update, hence it can describe the timeliness of the IoT application’s knowledge of the process sampled by the IoT device. In this work, we propose a model-driven and AoI-aware optimization scheme for information caching at the network edge. To configure the cache parameters, we formulate an optimization problem that minimizes the energy consumption, considering both the sampling frequency and the average frequency of the requests sent to the device for refreshing the cache, while satisfying an AoI requirement expressed by the IoT application. We apply our caching scheme in an emulated IoT network, and we show that it minimizes the energy cost while satisfying the AoI requirement. We also compare the case in which the proposed caching scheme is implemented at the network edge against the case in which there is not a cache at the network edge. We show that the optimized cache can significantly lower the energy cost of devices that have a high transmission cost because it can reduce the number of transmissions. Moreover, the cache makes the system less sensitive to higher application-request rates, as the number of messages forwarded to the devices depends on the cache parameters.

Privacy preserving Internet of Things: From privacy techniques to a blueprint architecture and efficient implementation

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to study lightweight security scheme for Internet of Things (IoT) applications using Constrained Application Protocol (CoAP). Resource-constrained characteristics of IoT systems have ushered in compelling requirements for lightweight application protocol and security suites. CoAP has already been established as the candidate protocol for IoT systems. However, low overhead security scheme for CoAP is still an open problem. Existing security solutions like Datagram Transport Layer Security (DTLS) is not suitable, particularly due to its expensive handshaking, public key infrastructure (PKI)-based authentication and lengthy ciphersuite agreement process. Design/methodology/approach – This paper proposes a lightweight security scheme in CoAP using Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) 128 symmetric key algorithm. The paper presents an object security (payload embedded)-based robust authentication mechanism with integrated key management. The paper introduces few unique modifications to CoAP header to optimize security operation and minimize communication cost. Findings – It is resilient to number of security attacks like replay attack, meet-in-the-middle attack and secure under chosen plaintext attack. This scheme is generic in nature, applicable for gamut of IoT applications. The paper proves efficacy of our proposed scheme for vehicle tracking application in emulated laboratory setup. Specifically, it compares with DTLS-enabled CoAP to establish the lightweight feature of our proposed solution. Research limitations/implications – This paper mainly focuses on implementing in-vehicle tracking systems as an IoT application and used CoAP as the application protocol. Practical implications – Such a lightweight security scheme would provide immense benefit in IoT systems so that resource constraint-sensing devices and nodes can be made secure. This would impact IoT eco systems to a large extent. Originality/value – Such kind of security suite that provides both robustness and lightweight feature is hitherto not known to the authors, particularly in CoAP for IoT applications.

Elderly population in the Asian countries is increasing at a very fast rate. Lack of healthcare resources and infrastructure in many countries makes the task of provding proper healthcare difficult. Internet of things (IoT) in healthcare can address the problem effectively. Patient care is possible at home using IoT devices. IoT devices are used to collect different types of data. Various algorithms may be used to analyse data. IoT devices are connected to the internet and all the data of the patients with various health reports are available online and hence security issues arise. IoT sensors, IoT communication technologies, IoT gadgets, components of IoT, IoT layers, cloud and fog computing, benefits of IoT, IoT-based algorithms, IoT security issues, and IoT challenges are discussed in the chapter. Nowadays global epidemic COVID19 has demolished the economy and health services of all the countries worldwide. Usefulness of IoT in COVID19-related issues is explained here.

At the current pace of technological advancement, it is evident that IoT (Internet of Things) devices are becoming an inevitable part of daily life. Since the growth rate is exceptional, this situation has led to an alarming rise in concern for security threats and issues in the IoT devices. The purpose of this study is to introduce a novel and well-structured threat-modeling approach which is specifically tailored for IoT devices. Traditional threat models like STRIDE, LINDDUN, CORAS, etc., are effective in software applications. However, these models do not cover every aspect of threats specific to IoT devices. The proposed approach consists of a seven-step threat-modeling process. This methodology also addresses aspects of IoT devices which directly affect the user: Privacy threats; Safety threats; and Malfunction threats (PSM). The mentioned threats cannot be addressed effectively with existing traditional threat-modeling approaches. The proposed threat modeling has been applied to three IoT applications: IoT-based smart home environments; IoT-based garment units; and IoT-based water quality management systems, in order to demonstrate the work’s effectiveness. It was seen that when coupling the proposed methodology with the PSM technique and existing threat modeling methods, threats directly affecting users were also identified. This method increases the performance and effectiveness of threat modeling, which leads to increased mitigation of the identified threats. This also leads to an increase in the security of the devices and environment. The final part of the study presents practical mitigation techniques to eliminate threats in IoT devices.

SummaryRecently, the deployment of novel smart network concepts, such as the Internet of things (IoT) or machine‐to‐machine communication, has gained more attention owing to its role in providing communication among various smart devices. The IoT involves a set of IoT devices (IoTDs) such as actuators and sensors that communicate with IoT applications via IoT gateways without human intervention. The IoTDs have different traffic types with various delay requirements, and we can classify them into two main groups: critical and massive IoTDs. The fundamental promising technology in the IoT is the advanced long‐term evolution (LTE‐A). In the future, the number of IoTDs attempting to access an LTE‐A network in a short period will increase rapidly and, thus, significantly reduce the performance of the LTE‐A network and affect the QoS required by variant IoT traffic. Therefore, efficient resource allocation is required.In this paper, we propose a priority‐based allocation scheme for multiclass service in IoT to efficiently share resources between critical and massive IoTD traffic based on their specific characteristics while protecting the critical IoTDs, which have a higher priority over the massive IoTDs. The performance of the proposed scheme is analyzed using the Geo/G/1 queuing system focusing on QoS guarantees and resource utilization of both critical and massive IoTDs. The distribution of service time of the proposed system is determined and, thus, the average waiting and service times are derived. The results indicate that the performance of the massive IoTDs depends on the data traffic characteristics of the critical IoTDs. Furthermore, the results emphasize the importance of the system delay analysis and demonstrate its effects on IoT configurations.

Due to the rapid growth of the Internet of Things (IoT), researchers have demonstrated various IoT solutions, which are used to interconnect a wide range of IoT devices through the Internet. However, IoT stumbled into vertical silos; the available solutions provide specific IoT infrastructure, devices, protocols, data formats and models. This diversity and heterogeneity lead to interoperability issues. Heterogeneity happens at all IoT layers, especially at the application layer; devices often adopt mutually incompatible application-layer communication protocols to connect devices to IoT services. Furthermore, in order to integrate semantics to raw data, each system uses its one domain-specific ontology to make data more understandable and interpretable by adding semantic annotations. Working in isolation reduces the interoperability among IoT devices and systems, things across domains need to internetwork and collaborate to provide high level IoT services. Therefore, to alleviate the problem of both communication protocol interoperability and semantic interoperability across vertical silos of systems at the application layer, this paper proposes a semantic gateway (SGIoT) that acts as a bridge between heterogeneous sink nodes at the physical level and IoT services. SGIoT enables interconnectivity between communication protocols such as CoAP and MQTT regardless of their communication model, meanwhile it enables semantics integration throu gh cross-domain ontology (CDOnto) for semantic annotation, in order to provide interpretation of messages among IoT applications across domains. Our approach focuses on modularity and extensibility.

WITHDRAWN: A novel RSS based light weight digital certificate and key generation scheme for coherent communication of IoT devices

SummaryThe Internet of Things (IoT) is the future technology, whose glimpses are already visible in various fields today. IoT promises a connection of about 50 billion devices in the near future to enhance data sharing and analysis between many otherwise independent modules. Smart sensors, smart antennas, and intelligent processors form the backbone of IoT technology. IoT is about remote detection and control of devices which is dependent on the efficient communication system provided. This paper studies the IoT technology, along with its supportive systems, giving an emphasis to the communication module, enabled using microstrip patch antennas. The study takes a walk through the different improvement techniques implemented in patch antennas as DGS, MIMO, and arrays and further pins down the research gaps and objectives that can be taken up in this field with respect to the effective implementation of IoT services. Recent advances in the antenna systems employed in IoT environment are discussed, and the antennas employed in IoT devices and applications are reviewed in detail. Recently evolving technologies like LoRa and NB‐IoT and the ESP8266 module which is widely used in IoT applications are addressed. A good insight is given into the challenges faced in this field along with some recent case studies.

Internet of Things (IoT) have opened the door to a world of unlimited possibilities for implementations in varied sectors in society, but it also has many challenges. One of those challenges is security and privacy. IoT devices are more susceptible to security threats and attacks. Due to constraints of the IoT devices such as area, power, memory, etc., there is a lack of security solutions that are compatible with IoT devices and applications, which is leading this world of securely connected things to the “internet of insecure things.” A promising solution to this problem is going beyond the standard or classical techniques to implementing the security solutions in the hardware of the IoT device. The integration of emerging technologies in IoT networks, such as machine learning, blockchain, fog/edge/cloud computing, and quantum computing have added more vulnerable points in the network. This paper introduces a comprehensive study on IoT security threats and solutions. Additionally, this survey outlines how emerging technologies such as machine learning and blockchain are integrated in IoT, challenges resulted from this integration, and potential solutions to these challenges. The paper utilizes the 4-layer IoT architecture as a reference to identify security issues with corresponding solutions.