Formalization and Verification of Group Communication CoAP Using CSP

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.

Service discovery is one of the key requirements to realize the vision of the Internet of Things (IoT). Constrained application protocol (CoAP) is a well-accepted model that utilizes both centralized and distributed service discovery methods for lightweight and constrained IoT networks. Since CoAP is in its early stage of adoption for the IoT networks, it is important to select an efficient method for the service discovery requirement. In this paper, we implement both centralized and distributed models of the CoAP based service discovery techniques. We have used Contiki OS and Cooja simulator to build the experimental setup for our prototype systems. Our detailed empirical analysis finds the gaps in general CoAP based service discovery techniques to recommend further improvement scopes.

As a leading architecture of Information-Centric Networking (ICN), Named Data Networking (NDN) plays an important role in the future network construction. NDN retrieves and identifies a data packet according to the packet's name instead of its IP address. Conventional protocols of TCP/IP Internet are unsuitable for NDN. Therefore, Named-data Link State Routing protocol (NLSR) is proposed as an intra-domain routing protocol for NDN. Although NLSR applies a five-layer trust model to guarantee its data security, there are still a lot of security issues in its data access mechanism, such as the fake and leakage of data. In this paper, we apply Communicating Sequential Processes (CSP) to formalize this mechanism. Using Process Analysis Toolkit (PAT), we verify four properties, including deadlock freedom, data availability, data security and data decryption. According to the verification results, the trust model cannot protect the data from fake and leakage once intruders appear. We adopt a method similar to digital signature in the first improved model. However, the process of obtaining keys still needs to be executed multiple times during the verification of a data packet. To further accelerate the key fetching and verification process, all the keys, needed to validate a data packet, are packaged in a special packet of the second improvement.

In this paper we compare the performance of three application layer protocols, that are Constrained Application Protocol (CoAP), WebSocket and Message Queuing Telemetry Transport (MQTT), in an Internet of Things (IoT) scenario. The three protocols have been implemented on the same low cost and low complexity hardware platform, suitable for IoT applications. The performance, in terms of protocol efficiency, strictly related to the overhead, and average Round Trip Time (RTT), were experimentally evaluated. In the considered scenario an IoT device was transmitting data to a server and waiting for replies. IEEE 802.11.b/g/n air interface was used for the communication between the IoT device and an Access Point (AP), connected to the final server. Two different settings have been considered: a local area network (LAN) configuration, where the AP and the server were in the same LAN; and a more realistic IoT configuration, where the AP was connected to a remote server via the Internet. Furthermore, in the IoT configuration, two types of Internet connection are considered: a connection established through a home router and another via cellular network. Results show that CoAP achieves the highest protocol efficiency and the lowest average RTT, closely followed by WebSocket. The performance of MQTT protocol strongly depend on the Quality of Service (QoS) profile. Changing the environment, from a LAN network to a realistic IoT scenario, does not significantly impact the protocol efficiency, but has a considerable influence on the average RTT, which increases by a factor of 2 or 3, depending on the protocol. Finally, we give some insights on the impact of routing through a cellular network on the system performance.

The Internet of Medical Things (IoMT) is a collection of medical equipment and software that can help patients get better care. The purpose of this study is to improve the security of data collected through remote health monitoring of patients utilizing Constrained Application Protocol (CoAP). Asymmetric cryptography techniques may be used to assure the security of such sensor networks. For communication between different IoMT devices and a remote server, the safe CoAP is compatible with the Datagram Transport Layer Security (DTLS) protocol for creating a secure session using existing algorithms such as Lightweight Establishment of Secure Session. The DTLS layer of CoAP, in contrast, has shortcomings in key control, session establishment, and multicast message exchange. As a consequence, for IoMT communication, the creation of an efficient protocol for safe CoAP session establishment is needed. Thus, to solve the existing problems related to key management and multicast security in CoAP, we have proposed an efficient and secure communication technique to establish a secure session key between IoMT devices and distant servers using lightweight Energy-Efficient and Secure CoAP Elliptic Curve Cryptography (E2SCEC2). The advantage of using E2SCEC2 over other identification methods such as Rivest-Shamir-Adleman (RSA) is its compact key size, which allows it to use a smaller key size. This article also compares these algorithms on parameters such as time spent generating keys, signature generation, and verification of E2SCEC2 and RSA algorithms, as well as energy consumption and radio duty cycle, to see if they are compatible in constrained environments.

The Internet of Things (IoT) is expanding rapidly to new domains in which embedded devices play a key role and gradually outnumber traditionally-connected devices. These devices are often constrained in their resources and are thus unable to run standard Internet protocols. The Constrained Application Protocol (CoAP) is a new alternative standard protocol that implements the same principals as the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP), but is tailored towards constrained devices. In many IoT application domains, devices need to be addressed in groups in addition to being addressable individually. Two main approaches are currently being proposed in the IoT community for CoAP-based group communication. The main difference between the two approaches lies in the underlying communication type: multicast versus unicast. In this article, we experimentally evaluate those two approaches using two wireless sensor testbeds and under different test conditions. We highlight the pros and cons of each of them and propose combining these approaches in a hybrid solution to better suit certain use case requirements. Additionally, we provide a solution for multicast-based group membership management using CoAP.

Observing CoAP groups efficiently

The Internet of Things (IoT) is a framework of interconnected computing devices mechanical and digital machines, internationally identifiable physical objects (or things) or people that are have unique identity and the ability to transfer data over a network without human-to-human or human-to-computer interaction., their combination with the Internet, and their representation in the digital world. The accessibility and availability of cheap components of IoT devices enables a extensive range of applications and provide smart environments. These devices perform actuating and sensing tasks and identified through unique addresses. The IoT devices are connected to the Internet and expected to use the Constrained Application Protocol (CoAP) at the application layer as a main web transfer protocol. Message Queuing Telemetry Transport (MQTT) does not enforce the use of a particular security approach for its applications, but instead leaves that to the application designer. Therefore, IoT solutions can be based on application context and specific security requirements. MQTT is a Client Server publish/subscribe messaging transport protocol. It is lightweight, open, uncomplicated, and designed to make implementation more easier. These characteristics of MQTT make it perfect for use in most of the situations, including communication in Machine to Machine (M2M) and Internet of Things (IoT). In IOT there is major use of Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN) which connects virtual world to physical world. In this paper focus is given to application layer of IOT. In application layer two important protocols are MQTT and CoAP. Security mechanism is proposed in the paper for these protocols.

Recently, IETF (Internet Engineering Task Force) presented CoAP (Constrained Application Protocol) for the communication between sensor and actuator nodes in a constrained environment such as small amount of memory and low power. IETF CoAP protocol can convert easily, and can use to monitor or control infrastructure utilities through low-power sensor and actuator networks in IoT (Internet of Things) and M2M (Machine-to-Machine) environment. IETF CoAP protocol provides the special requirements of this constrained environment, especially considering energy, automation, and other IoT applications. In this paper, we design and implement a node registration and discovering based CoAP in IoT environment. The node is a CoAP node which is designed for working in constrained environment. For node registration in IoT, we used CoRE RD (Resource Directory) functionalities to register CoAP node’s information which works in IoT environment.

The Internet of Things (IoT) is playing a key role in consumer and business environments. Due to the sensitivity of the information IoT devices collect and share, and the potential impact a data breach can have in people’s lives, securing communication and access to data in IoT has become a critical feature. Multiple application layer protocols are used nowadays in IoT, with the Constrained Application Protocol (CoAP) and the Message Queue Telemetry Transport (MQTT) being two of the most widely popular. In this paper, we propose a solution to increase the security of both CoAP and MQTT based on the distributed Usage Control (UCON) framework. The inclusion of UCON provides dynamic access control to the data shared using these protocols. This occurs by monitoring mutable attributes related to the local protocol nodes and also by sharing data values between remote nodes via the distributed instances of UCON. We present the architecture and the workflow of our approach together with a real implementation for performance evaluation purposes.

Constrained Application Protocol (CoAP) is a communication protocol at application layer in the Internet of things (IoT). It employs NSTART parameter to maintain outstanding parallel connections toward individual destinations for data transfer. In the existing implementation of CoAP, the value for NSTART is defined statically. Where the higher values of this parameter up to a threshold give better throughput in moderate traffic, the lower values for the same control the congestion in overload situations. In overload situations, higher values of NSTART result in increased overhead and thereby perform poorly in terms of throughput. The static nature of the parameter and its relevant performance issues demand to manage NSTART dynamically in CoAP. In this work, we propose an algorithm to adjust the value of NSTART dynamically based on the congestion in the network. The proposed approach is an attempt to make the client free from managing NSTART dynamically. For the proof of concept, we implement and run simulations on Cooja mote at IoT/FIT-Lab testbed and Californium CoAP client. The results show 15% improvement in throughput, 15% reduction in average exchange duration, and 48% reduction in average number of retries (average taken of three scenarios) by proposed approach in comparison with the best case of CoCoA (NSTART = 4).

For Web-based applications in Internet of Things (IoT) environment, the IETF CoRE Working Group developed the Constrained Application Protocol (CoAP). A limitation of CoAP is that it does not address a mobility management for CoAP sensor nodes, which may move between different IP domains of a wireless sensor network. In this paper, we propose the CoAP-based Mobility Management Protocol (CoMP), which can provide mobility management for mobile CoAP sensor nodes. CoMP keeps track of the current IP addresses of mobile sensor and enables sensing data to be reliably delivered to the Web clients, using both HTTP and CoAP. The idea is that CoMP employs a separate location management function to support CoAP service mobility, and two operating modes, CoMP holding and binding modes, are used for a reliable data transmission during handover. To do this, we have designed the architecture of CoMP. Furthermore, we have designed the detailed signaling flow, the message format and algorithm of CoMP for the mobility support. Finally, the numerical analysis and simulation results of the handover latency and packet loss show the benefits of the proposed protocol.

Internet of Things (IoT) is a massive network based on tiny devices connected internally and to the internet. Each connected device is uniquely identified in this network through a dedicated IP address and can share the information with other devices. In contrast to its alternatives, IoT consumes less power and resources; however, this makes its devices more vulnerable to different types of attacks as they cannot execute heavy security protocols. Moreover, traditionally used heavy protocols for web-based communication, such as the Hyper Text Transport Protocol (HTTP) are quite costly to be executed on IoT devices, and thus specially designed lightweight protocols, such as the Constrained Application Protocol (CoAP) are employed for this purpose. However, while the CoAP remains widely-used, it is also susceptible to attacks, such as the Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) attack, which aims to overwhelm the resources of the target and make them unavailable to legitimate users. While protocols, such as the Datagram Transport Layer Security (DTLS) and Lightweight and the Secure Protocol for Wireless Sensor Network (LSPWSN) can help in securing CoAP against DDoS attacks, they also have their limitations. DTLS is not designed for constrained devices and is considered as a heavy protocol. LSPWSN, on the other hand, operates on the network layer, in contrast to CoAP which operates on the application layer. This paper presents a machine learning model, using the CIDAD dataset (created on 11 July 2022), that can detect the DDoS attacks against CoAP with an accuracy of 98%.

In the Internet of things (IoT), research arena Constrained application protocol (CoAP) is becoming the most accepted protocol for IoT service discovery. To make the protocol more performance promising new recommendations are amending to the existing mechanism of discovering services. In this paper we propose, LOAMY, a cloud-based middleware, aiming at providing mobility and interoperability for the dynamically changing context of services in constrained IoT network. Our main objective is to combine the advantageous characteristics of existing CoAP Centralized and Distributed models into a single model for an efficient service discovery in the context of constrained IoT Network. Both the existing centralized and distributed models of CoAP has been simulated using Contiki OS and Cooja simulator to build the experimental setup. We have conducted detailed experiments for our proposed model and compared the results with existing centralized and distributed CoAP service discovery mechanisms to demonstrate the effectiveness of our proposed method. We have considered heterogeneous types of client requests for the experimental analysis.

Data communication stack on Internet of Things (IoT)-devices is traditionally implemented in software as a part of their operating systems. In IoT-applications for which resource constrained IoT-devices are deployed, leveraging microprocessor(s) for both computing and data communication tasks may result in poor application performance and high power consumption. In order to alleviate these performance and power issues, using System on Chip (SoC) field programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) for the hardware acceleration of the performance- or power-critical software tasks is a recent, popular trend in the literature. On the other hand, constrained application protocol (CoAP) is a pivotal network protocol for many IoT-applications. Motivated by these facts, in this article, a hardware accelerator for a CoAP server network stack is proposed and realized on a SmartFusion2 SoC FPGA. The hardware accelerated CoAP server network stack is thoroughly evaluated and compared in terms of its performance, latency, power consumption, and FPGA resource utilization against a baseline software implemented CoAP server network stack. The evaluation results obtained clearly show that the CoAP hardware accelerator provides significantly higher performance and lower response message latency, while consuming significantly less power. Consequently, the CoAP hardware accelerator proposed seems to be a strong viable solution for the resource constrained IoT-devices.