Report on Internet of Things: Security, Future, and Societal Impact

This report offers a comprehensive overview of the Internet of Things (IoT), exploring its various facets. It begins by defining IoT and highlighting its growing importance, then delves into recent cyber-security issues, including physical attacks, reconnaissance attacks, DoS attacks, access attacks, privacy attacks, cyber-crimes, and destructive attacks. The report then forecasts the future of IoT, emphasizing its potential benefits in areas like smart homes, wearable devices, and smart cities, while also acknowledging its potential for criminal activities such as hacking and terrorism. Furthermore, it examines the social, political, and legal aspects of IoT, underscoring its impact on information flow, business models, and the need for new legal frameworks. The report concludes by emphasizing the importance of strong security policies to mitigate the threats associated with IoT.

Running head: INTERNET OF THINGS
Internet of Things
Name of the Student
Name of University
Author’s note

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Abstract
The main objective of this report is to discuss the various aspects of Internet of Things. It is an
essential need in this generation. Several attacks and cyber security issues like DoS, privacy
access and physical access are discussed in this report. IoT provides several advantages to the
society. The use of IoT for good as well as criminal purposes has been discussed in this report.
IoT can be utilized by the terrorists to cause destruction. . Strong security policies can help in
overcoming the security threats of IoT.

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Table of Contents
Introduction..........................................................................................................................3
Recent Cyber-security Issues of IoT....................................................................................3
Future of IoT........................................................................................................................4
IoT- Used for Good and Criminal Purposes........................................................................5
Social, Political and Legal Aspects.....................................................................................6
Conclusion...........................................................................................................................6
References............................................................................................................................8

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Introduction
Internet of Things or IoT consists of computing devices that are interrelated. Users are
able to gain deep automation, integration as well as analysis within systems (Whitmore, Agarwal
& Da Xu, 2015). IoT makes maximum utilization of advanced technologies for the purpose of
sensing, robotics as well as networking. IoT is gaining importance with time. It is responsible for
enhancing the aspect of life and making everything “smart” in a virtual manner.
This report discusses about the issues related to the cyber-security of Internet of Things.
It also focuses on the future of IoT. This report also gives an overview of the positive role that
IoT plays in the society. It discusses about the use of IoT in facilitating criminal activities as
well. The social, legal as well as political aspects of IoT are discussed in this report.
Recent Cyber-security Issues of IoT
Cyber attacks and threats are growing with the use of Internet Technology. These types
of cyber attacks can be caused by hackers, governments as well as criminals (Abomhara, 2015).
Some common cyber-security issues that can take place are as follows:
Physical attacks: The hardware components are tampered in this type of attack. Most of
devices of IoT operate in an outdoor environment which can be susceptible to various physical
attacks and threats.
Reconnaissance attacks: In this type of attack unauthorized discovery as well as
mapping of services, systems and vulnerabilities takes place.

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DoS: In this attack the network resources are made unavailable to the intended users. The
IoT devices have low memory capacity and limited resources for computational purpose
(Kasinathan et al., 2013). Therefore most of the IoT devices are vulnerable to DoS attack.
Access attacks: The attacker can gain unauthorized or illegal access to devices and
networks. There can be physical access as well as remote access.
Privacy attacks: Protection of IoT privacy has become extremely challenging due to the
availability of information. Eavesdropping attack is a common category of attack where the
attacker listens to the conservation that is taking place between parties (Fink et al., 2015). The
attackers can track users by UID.
Cyber-crimes: Internet can be used for the purpose of exploiting users and sensitive data.
Theft of intellectual property, identity theft, fraud and brand theft are examples of cyber-crimes.
Destructive attacks: Internet space can be used for the purpose of causing destruction of
property and like through terrorism as well as revenge attacks.
Future of IoT
IoT is expected to bring several benefits in the future. Consumers will be able to access
or acquire more products and services based on their work and place. IoT will provide alternative
travelling routes and help the users to travel in an efficient manner. Health devices can be used at
home for monitoring the health of the people (Singh, Tripathi & Jara, 2014). IoT will help the
businesses and organizations to understand the behavior of the customers and provide better
products and services to their customers. This will help to improve the customer satisfaction
generating more revenue and profit. It will help the businesses to discover new services and

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products. Farmers can use smart irrigation practices and become more productive by providing
water in the correct place. Smart devices can be used for eliminating waste. IoT can improve the
road safety and street lighting efficiency by correct data collection methodology. In the future,
more number of cities will become smart. Artificial intelligence will be facilitated that will help
in machine learning. Routers will get smarter and become more secure than it is now.
IoT- Used for Good and Criminal Purposes
IoT will be able to solve several problems that are faced by the city people. IoT can b e
used for several good purposes like:
Creating smart homes: The smart home products will help the citizens to save time and
money along with energy (Soliman et al., 2013). It will make the life of the people much simpler
than what it is now.
Wearable: Wearable devices have sensors installed in them for the purpose of collecting
information regarding the users (Gubbi et al., 2013). This data is processed in order to gain
knowledge about the users. These devices generally cover the entertainment, fitness and health
requirements.
Smart cities: The use of smart surveillance, energy management, and urban security,
environment monitoring and automated transportation will make the cities smart.
IoT is growing at a fast pace. The number of devices that will be connected to the web
will increase in the future. IoT can be used for criminal purposes like:

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Criminals can hack into the wearable devices to access the sensitive and valuable
information of the users. They can alter the settings of the health devices harming the patient in a
severe manner.
Cyber worms and viruses can be injected in the web connected devices to gain control of
the devices. DDoS attacks can also take place.
Terrorism and revenge attacks are possible due to the increasing growth of IoT. The
attackers can use the cyber space to plan any kind of destruction to the lives and properties of the
people.
Social, Political and Legal Aspects
IoT helps in creating social capital by allowing information flow across residential and
professional communities in an effective manner. It is known for providing significant benefits to
the society (Da Xu, He & Li, 2014). The cost of storing, finding and communicating political
information has been made less. IoT will generate new business patterns that will need to make
contracts that will need the help of lawyers. New legal factors need to be incorporated in the
contracts of health, financial and business sectors.
Conclusion
This report concludes that IoT is playing a significant role in the lives of the people. It
discussed some of the cyber-security issues related to IoT. It said that Packet sniffers, scanning
of network ports and traffic analysis are examples of cyber-security attacks. Brute force and
dictionary attacks can take place in order to crack the password of a system. Cyber espionage
takes place where malicious software is used for spying on secret information of organization,

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individuals or government. This report spoke about the future of IoT along with its good impact
on the society. This report gave an overview of some of the possible criminal activities that can
take place by the use of IoT. This report also gave a brief overview of the various legal, social as
well as political aspects of IoT. Strong security policies can help in overcoming the security
threats of IoT.

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References
Abomhara, M. (2015). Cyber security and the internet of things: vulnerabilities, threats,
intruders and attacks. Journal of Cyber Security and Mobility, 4(1), 65-88.
Da Xu, L., He, W., & Li, S. (2014). Internet of things in industries: A survey. IEEE
Transactions on industrial informatics, 10(4), 2233-2243.
Fink, G. A., Zarzhitsky, D. V., Carroll, T. E., & Farquhar, E. D. (2015, June). Security and
privacy grand challenges for the Internet of Things. In Collaboration Technologies and
Systems (CTS), 2015 International Conference on (pp. 27-34). IEEE.
Gubbi, J., Buyya, R., Marusic, S., & Palaniswami, M. (2013). Internet of Things (IoT): A
vision, architectural elements, and future directions. Future generation computer
systems, 29(7), 1645-1660.
Kasinathan, P., Pastrone, C., Spirito, M. A., & Vinkovits, M. (2013, October). Denial-of-
Service detection in 6LoWPAN based Internet of Things. In Wireless and Mobile
Computing, Networking and Communications (WiMob), 2013 IEEE 9th International
Conference on (pp. 600-607). IEEE.
Singh, D., Tripathi, G., & Jara, A. J. (2014, March). A survey of Internet-of-Things: Future
vision, architecture, challenges and services. In Internet of things (WF-IoT), 2014 IEEE
world forum on (pp. 287-292). IEEE.
Soliman, M., Abiodun, T., Hamouda, T., Zhou, J., & Lung, C. H. (2013, December). Smart
home: Integrating internet of things with web services and cloud computing. In Cloud

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Computing Technology and Science (CloudCom), 2013 IEEE 5th International
Conference on (Vol. 2, pp. 317-320). IEEE.
Whitmore, A., Agarwal, A., & Da Xu, L. (2015). The Internet of Things—A survey of topics
and trends. Information Systems Frontiers, 17(2), 261-274.