Detailed Analysis of Security in the Internet of Things

This report provides a comprehensive overview of Internet of Things (IoT) security. It begins with an introduction to the concept of IoT, its increasing prevalence, and the potential security risks associated with interconnected devices. The report then outlines the project objectives, which include analyzing IoT usage, its impact on daily life, and the security concerns it poses. A literature review covers the concept of IoT, discussing its components and applications, followed by a detailed examination of IoT security, including the various threats at different layers of the IoT architecture. The report explores the security of each layer, emphasizing the importance of securing devices like gateways, RFID readers, and sensors. The report also touches upon the challenges and security requirements. The report concludes with a discussion of the project's limitations, a time schedule, and reflections on the learning process. The report offers valuable insights into the complex landscape of IoT security, providing a foundation for understanding and addressing the challenges of securing interconnected devices. The report highlights the importance of addressing security concerns and protecting against potential threats, thereby ensuring the safe and reliable operation of IoT systems.

Internet of Things
Security

TABLE OF CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................1
PROJECT OBJECTIVE..................................................................................................................1
PROJECT SCOPE...........................................................................................................................1
LITERATURE REVIEW................................................................................................................2
Concept of IOT.......................................................................................................................2
Security of IOT.......................................................................................................................3
Security of each layers............................................................................................................5
Gap.........................................................................................................................................7
PROJECT QUESTIONS.................................................................................................................7
Primary question.....................................................................................................................7
Secondary question.................................................................................................................7
PROJECT EXECUTION OR METHODOLOGY..........................................................................7
OUTCOMES OR RESULTS...........................................................................................................8
DISCUSSION................................................................................................................................11
Project Limitations...............................................................................................................12
Time schedule.......................................................................................................................12
REFLECTION OF MY LEARNING............................................................................................12
CONCLUSION..............................................................................................................................14
REFERENCES..............................................................................................................................15
APPENDIX....................................................................................................................................17

INTRODUCTION
In the modern day world where internet has become an integral part of the life.
Everything present in the world is getting attached with internet. All the gadgets are getting
attached with the internet and can be controlled using it (Alam, Chowdhury and Noll, 2011).
Information technology has reached in the life of the people and we are getting dependent on it
day by day. Internet of things is a network or linkage of all the vehicles, embedded electronic
items, physical devices, sensors, actuators, connectivity devices and many other things. It helps
in exchanging data among each other. It helps in controlling network infrastructure from remote
places. It can be understood as a collaboration or integration of computer based systems with the
physical world which helps in managing many of the daily works without human interventions.
But connecting such a wide variety of devices with each other increases the possibility of having
serious threat like piracy, privacy breach, data stealing and many more. In becoming smarter
there is lot that is on the stake. This report highlights the security threats that is present in front of
the IOT as well as the measures that is being taken throughout the world so as safeguard from
these threats.
PROJECT OBJECTIVE
 To determine and analyse IoT, its usage and its influence on the lives of people.
 To understand the security concern that is posed by the usage of IOT and the measures
that can be taken so as to safeguard everyone from the threats.
PROJECT SCOPE
This research is based on the fact that has been derived from study that focuses on
understanding the IOT devices and how it effects the general life on daily basis. It has been noted
that by evaluating this factor effectively it has been derived that there are major security
concerns that attached with the usage of IOT and its pros and cons. It also addresses the ways in
which IOT has made our task easier and the devices can be accessed from any far of place. This
project scope includes the threats related to use of IOT and measures that has been taken so as to
remove the security concerns. This all things suggests that this project will improve the
understanding about the IOT security concerns.
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LITERATURE REVIEW
Concept of IOT
As per the view point of Babar and et. al., (2011) IOT is connection of all the things that
is present in day to day activities such as devices, sensors, embedded systems, and many other
electronic devices. It is one of the rising trend in which there are multiple researches that are
going on. People are getting connected with the high speed internet facilities, Wi-Fi routers with
the use of modern day gadgets. IOT has empowered humans with the facility that they can
operate there devices and machineries anywhere in the world with the use of internet. Many
industries where technological advancements have influenced the working methodologies this is
one of the major facilitators of their business. As per the definition given by ITU-TY.2060 IOT
is considered as the infrastructure at global level for the society, enabling advanced
interconnection (virtual and physical) things based on the evolving and existing inter operable
information and communication technologies. According to Bandyopadhyay and Sen, (2011)
IOT is such a system which provides connectivity and interactive communication for anything.
Being connected is a term that is being used in context of electronic devices that is being used in
our daily lives, other physical objects such as actuators or sensors that is connected with the
internet and having particular distinguished address. Data related to the physical objects are
transmitted continuously using wired and wireless networks that are connected to the platforms
where it can be interpreted. Objects having physical presence are capable of understanding
environment complexities and can react due to their feature of communication and sense.
Chahid, Benabdellah and Azizi, (2017) states that revolutionary advance in this case is that the
physical entities starts to be deployed and adopted widely. It is highly beneficial because most of
the things starts to work automatically without the interventions of the human. Future of this
technology illustrates that every object in the daily life of the human can be controlled with the
mobile phones and the remote control for the physical world is commonly understood as IOT. In
the view point of Gartner, it is expected that by 2020 number of devices that are connected to the
IOT will rise from 25 billion to 50 billion. The concept of IOT has become particularly popular
via some representative application like greenhouse monitoring, intelligent transportation, smart
electric meter reading, telemedicine monitoring etc. The concept of IOT has four major
components including heterogeneous access, sensing, application components like privacy and
security, information processing. As per the view stated by Farooq and et. al., (2015) application
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of IOT will arise in coming years such as cyber physical systems, cyber transportation systems
and machine to machine communications.
Security of IOT
As it can be seen that there is a large amount of devices that is connected to the IOT.
Such a massive network imposes great security threats to personal data where attackers can steal
personal information about the users of firm which are connected to such an IOT infrastructure.
This reports main goal revolves around the security issues that comes by the use of IOT devices.
There are several reason why security is a concerns like IOT is considered as the extended
version of several different technologies like Mobile broadband, wireless Sensor networks and
2G and 3G communication networks which is already under threat due of many flaws in the
security. Another thing is that the environment that is created by devices connected with the IOT
makes the environment unsecured which can lead to many kinds of breaches. Objects in IOT
interact with each other which generates the possibility that security and privacy can be hindered.
Considering these points there are various security requirements as well as challenges that is
faced by IOT implementation which can be resolved by changes in architecture.
As per the view point of Gan, Lu and Jiang, (2011) IOT enables individuals to get
connected with each other at any point of time at any place using internet. So implementation in
correct order becomes more important. First of all hardware which comprises of central system,
Sensors are included in this. Since the sensors have limited hardware but still multiple sensors
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source 1: Internet of things, 2017

are connected with other which makes it capable of storing, processing and delivering data. Then
comes the middleware which consists of calculation and storage tools for analysis of data. In
modern times such middle ware that can be considered or mainly used is cloud computing as it is
the integrity of several technologies like service oriented architecture, hardware virtualisation,
computing such as grid, distributed, utility and autonomic as well as load balancing. Computing
style relies on resource sharing which is provided as a service over the internet to achieve
economy of scale as well as coherence. Then comes presentation in visualisation and
interpretation is present. These tools are designed to work on any platform by the use of any
devices.
In the study made by Granjal, Monteiro and Silva, (2015) he illustrates that the
opportunity of accessing information using tagged objects by internet browsing may have
promoted the development of IOT. The internet addresses are provided using NFC, RFID and
QR Codes. Some of the pioneer technologies for IoT is a nano and sensor technologies. For data
collection wireless sensor networks can be beneficial as they can control over many nodes like
self-organisation and multiple hopping. There are sensors that are attached with this which
detects physical phenomena like heat, light etc. The system can execute data collection. Gubbi
and et. al. (2013) says that this architecture is an open source which can be accessed through
open protocols which supports variety of existing application networks. The four layers that is
involved in this architecture is perception, network, support and application. Due to such
openness anybody with proper knowledge can breach the system. Due to its scalability and
flexibility this problem intensifies.
According to Gusmeroli, Piccione and Rotondi, (2013) there are several security
requirements that are posed like Authorisation, Authenticity, integrity, confidentiality as well as
continuity and availability and the challenges that comes in front of security are resource
constraints, Interoperability, data volumes, scalability, privacy detection, autonomic control etc.
According to different layers there are different security threats. Like in the perception layer
threats that are generated are Spoofing, Signal radio jamming, device tempering or node
capturing, note outage, path based DoS attack and eavesdropping. Threats associated with
network layer are Selective forwarding, attacks such as Sybil, black or sink hole, warm hole,
man in the middle, hello flood and acknowledgement flooding. Threats that are associated with
support layer are tempering of data, DoS attack, unauthorised access. And threats attached with
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application layer is sniffer or loggers, injection, session high jacking, DDoS and social
engineering.
Security of each layers
For securing the whole network each layer needs to be secured. For this purpose devices
such as gateways, RFID readers, GPS devices and sensors needs to secure. As per the view point
of Heer and et. al., (2011) perception layer can be secured by procedure where first step is to
ensure that only authorised individuals can have access to data that is sensitive and are produced
by physical objects. One of the major issues that this layer faces is data collection which has two
parts first is multimedia collection which can be secured using multimedia compression, water
marking, stenography, encryption, Intellectual property and time session. Second is image data
collection that uses image security such as CRC and image compression. Apart from these one of
the main task in security mechanism is the Cryptographic processing. In order to guarantee data
privacy includes sign, key and hash generation, encryption and decryption and hashes
verification. In this regard algorithms becomes important where two algorithms are compared
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source 2: security issue in IoT, 2017

with asymmetric algorithms in Elliptical curve cryptography and RSA on sensor nodes which
proved ECC to be more efficient.
On the other hand asymmetric cryptography is applicable for resource constrained
hardware. Therefore the focus must be given to reduce the complexity of asymmetric
cryptography as well as key distribution protocols. Key distribution mechanism is demonstrated
so as to use light weight communication channels in resource constrained networks. As per the
views expressed by Jara, Zamora and Skarmeta, (2011) risk assessment is the fundamental of the
IOT security which highlights the extent of potential threats and risk associated with it. The
output of this process helps to identify appropriate controls for diminishing or eliminating risk
during the process of risk mitigation.
While talking about network layers there are two major sub layers that is wired and
wireless. In wireless network deployment of protocols for key management and authentication
like SSL/TLS is developed to encrypt the links in the transport layer, IP security protocols for
network layer which provides integrity, authenticity and confidentiality in each layer. Use of
private pre shared keys for each devices or sensors connected to the network provides another
measures of security for IOT systems. The passwords in the gateways and routers must be done
carefully and immediately upon new network installation. Password management and change is
very important in this regard.
On the other hand wired sub layer is concerned with devices that are conned through
wired lines. Some of the commonly used techniques in this regard are intrusion prevention
system and firewalls. The packets that are destined towards destination can be inspected deeply
if there is a firewall or IPS. But it is the fact that existing IOT does not have ability in terms of
packet filtering and inspection. It is the research process to develop a low source Hungary
firewall for IOT that enables it to to have the ability of packet inspection.
In the views of Jing and et. al., (2014), for the security of Support and application layer it
is divided into two sub layers. One sub layer has local application and related middleware
functions that must be secured with several techniques. Like encryption techniques can be used
for intelligent transportation system, steganography for smart metering of home. Another sub
layer corresponds to national application and their security systems which ensures received and
sent data. Variety security techniques that are applied in these are authorisation, authentication,
intrusion detection, antivirus, firewall, selective disclosure and access control list. Data security
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is another issue in this layer. Several precautions are taken by security system on IOT like safe
programming and use of antivirus software that tests against the malicious code injection and
service loopholes, data verification and developing temporary cache against malicious
operations, session inspection mechanism to stop high jacking and session redo, boundary
inspection, data encryption mechanism and control of resource access to neglect privacy leakage.
Gap
There are many gaps that is present in the literature review and the practical
implementation of the concept of IOT. One such gap that has arisen is that it did not implicates
anything on the requirements of each devices that is connected at various levels of IOT.
PROJECT QUESTIONS
Primary question
What are the main security concerns that are associated with the use of IOT?
Secondary question
 What are the types of security threats that arises from IOT?
 What are the sources of threats?
 How these security threats can be diminished?
 What is the present condition of IOT security and what are the challenges that is going to
come in the way of IOT development?
PROJECT EXECUTION OR METHODOLOGY
Present project has two aspect technical and theoretical. It suggests that both theoretical
and statistical techniques needs to be applied on the data set that is collected. Project execution
or methodology is a type of process that is used researchers so that overall objectives goals and
aims can be achieved in a proper manner. Some of the activities that needs to follow in this
regard is provided below.
 Project design: It has be applied by the researcher so that overall understanding about
the IOT security can be enhanced. Some of the differentiated techniques of design in this
regard are descriptive, explanatory and correlative (Khan and et. al., 2012). In this project
descriptive or detailed approach is used. This helps to have in-depth knowledge about
IOT security concerns.
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 Approach of research: There are two kinds of research approaches that can be used for
this purpose namely inductive and deductive. Here inductive approach could be used by
the researcher so that theories can be developed on the basis of observation.
 Research philosophy: In any research project positivism and interpretivism philosophy
can be used (Kothmayr and et. al., 2013). In this research interpretivism has been used by
the researchers so as to have analysis about the several human perceptions.
 Data collection techniques: There are two sources from where data can be accumulated
namely primary and secondary. Primary information is gathered by questionnaires and
surveys which helps to understand the thoughts of different people can be examined.
Another way is secondary resources such as books and journals as well as papers related
to his topic.
 Sampling technique: This technique is used by the project managers or researchers in
which small samples from wider population is made. In the present report research was
conducted using random sampling which helps in extracting crucial information.
 Data analysis: There are two methods of analysing the data i.e. qualitative and
quantitative (Li and Xiong, 2013). In this project qualitative data analysis is used for
research. Here thematic analysis is taken where several themes can be formed and are
based on the graphs made that ultimately helps in proper data interpretation.
OUTCOMES OR RESULTS
From the above based parts there are many things that can be underlined. Internet of
things refers to as objects that are uniquely identifiable, things and their virtual representation in
an internet like structure. In present times this concept of IOT has got particularly popular
through via some of the applications like intelligent transportation, automatic meter control,
intelligent monitoring (GSMA IoT Security Guidelines & Assessment, 2017). IOT has four
major elements that includes heterogeneous access, processing of information, services and
applications, sensing of physical parameters and one extra element such as privacy and security.
There are many branches that has arisen due to IOT and many industry applications have
evolved like cyber physical systems, machine to machine communication and cyber
transportation (Li, Xuan and Wen, 2011).
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There is a lot more security concerns that are associated with the use of IOT because of
certain reasons like it is an extension of internet through existing mobile and sensory networks,
every element will be connected to the internet and they will have the capability to contact,
interact or communicate with each other. It increases the demand for making more secured
network technology as well as to strengthen policies related to it. We must conduct research so
that authenticity, confidentiality and integrity of data can be maintained. With the development
of cloud computing, advanced network techniques, control using distributed multi agents,
autonomous control in M2M research to generate an evolution of M2M in the form of CPS (IoT
security (Internet of Things security, 2017).
This helps in making application more interactive, distributed real time control, cross
layer optimisation etc. Therefore some new methodologies and technologies must be developed
so as to fulfil the requirements in terms of security, reliability and privacy. It is a prime concern
among various researchers about the security of the network and information which has the
property like integrality, undeniability, confidentiality and identification (Ning and Liu, 2012).
On the contrary from internet, IOT will be applied to important areas of business interest like
medical and health related issues, intelligent transportation. These makes the importance of
having the security in the IOT higher while enhancing the dependability and availability of the
system. There are four levels in which the whole architecture of IOT is divided. Starting from the
most basic level known as perceptual or recognition layer. Here all kinds of information are
accumulated through physical equipment and identifies the physical world, information include
entity properties, condition of environment etc.
On the other hand physical equipment includes all types of sensors equipment such as
GPS and others, RFID readers. One of the main element of this network is the sensors that
converts physical data into digital information. Second level that is present is network layer,
which is responsible for reliable transmission of information from perceptual level, initial
processing of information, polymerisation and classification. In this layer transmission of
information is relied on several basic networks such as mobile communication system, nets
related to satellite, network infrastructure and protocols for interaction is also essential for the
exchange of information between devices. Third level is also known as support layer which
provides a reliable support to the whole systems and also provides support platform for the
application layer (Ning, Liu and Yang, 2013). It will ultimately help in making it organised
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