Survey on blockchain for Internet of Things

Blockchain is receiving increasing attention from academy and industry, since it is considered a breakthrough technology that could bring huge benefits to many different sectors. In 2017, Gartner positioned blockchain close to the peak of inflated expectations, acknowledging the enthusiasm for this technology that is now largely discussed by media. In this scenario, the risk to adopt it in the wake of enthusiasm, without objectively judging its actual added value is rather high. Insurance is one the sectors that, among others, started to carefully investigate the possibilities of blockchain. For this specific sector, however, the hype cycle shows that the technology is still in the innovation trigger phase, meaning that the spectrum of possible applications has not been fully explored yet. Insurers, as with many other companies not necessarily active only in the financial sector, are currently requested to make a hard decision, that is, whether to adopt blockchain or not, and they will only know if they were right in 3–5 years. The objective of this paper is to support actors involved in this decision process by illustrating what a blockchain is, analyzing its advantages and disadvantages, as well as discussing several use cases taken from the insurance sector, which could easily be extended to other domains.

https://www.mdpi.com/1999-5903/10/2/20/pdf

Blockchain and Smart Contracts for Insurance: Is the Technology Mature Enough?

Privacy and security are among the significant challenges of the Internet of Things (IoT). Improper device updates, lack of efficient and robust security protocols, user unawareness, and famous active device monitoring are among the challenges that IoT is facing. In this work, we are exploring the background of IoT systems and security measures, and identifying (a) different security and privacy issues, (b) approaches used to secure the components of IoT-based environments and systems, (c) existing security solutions, and (d) the best privacy models necessary and suitable for different layers of IoT driven applications. In this work, we proposed a new IoT layered model: generic and stretched with the privacy and security components and layers identification. The proposed cloud/edge supported IoT system is implemented and evaluated. The lower layer represented by the IoT nodes generated from the Amazon Web Service (AWS) as Virtual Machines. The middle layer (edge) implemented as a Raspberry Pi 4 hardware kit with support of the Greengrass Edge Environment in AWS. We used the cloud-enabled IoT environment in AWS to implement the top layer (the cloud). The security protocols and critical management sessions were between each of these layers to ensure the privacy of the users’ information. We implemented security certificates to allow data transfer between the layers of the proposed cloud/edge enabled IoT model. Not only is the proposed system model eliminating possible security vulnerabilities, but it also can be used along with the best security techniques to countermeasure the cybersecurity threats facing each one of the layers; cloud, edge, and IoT.

/pdf/iot-privacy-and-security-challenges-and-solutions-4jzb1g1kft.pdf

IoT Privacy and Security: Challenges and Solutions

One of the goals of smart environments is to improve the quality of human life in terms of comfort and efficiency. The Internet of Things (IoT) paradigm has recently evolved into a technology for building smart environments. Security and privacy are considered key issues in any real-world smart environment based on the IoT model. The security vulnerabilities in IoT-based systems create security threats that affect smart environment applications. Thus, there is a crucial need for intrusion detection systems (IDSs) designed for IoT environments to mitigate IoT-related security attacks that exploit some of these security vulnerabilities. Due to the limited computing and storage capabilities of IoT devices and the specific protocols used, conventional IDSs may not be an option for IoT environments. This article presents a comprehensive survey of the latest IDSs designed for the IoT model, with a focus on the corresponding methods, features, and mechanisms. This article also provides deep insight into the IoT architecture, emerging security vulnerabilities, and their relation to the layers of the IoT architecture. This work demonstrates that despite previous studies regarding the design and implementation of IDSs for the IoT paradigm, developing efficient, reliable and robust IDSs for IoT-based smart environments is still a crucial task. Key considerations for the development of such IDSs are introduced as a future outlook at the end of this survey.

/pdf/intrusion-detection-systems-for-iot-based-smart-environments-1btikhn15k.pdf

Intrusion detection systems for IoT-based smart environments: a survey

Internet of Things (IoT) is an enabler for the intelligence appended to many central features of the modern world, such as hospitals, cities, grids, organizations, and buildings. The security and privacy are some of the major issues that prevent the wide adoption of Internet of Things. In this paper, with example scenarios, we are presenting review of security attacks from the perspective of layers that comprises IoT. In addition, a review of methods that provide solutions to these issues is presented along with their limitations. To overcome these limitations, we have provided future work recommendations with a framework. Further research and implementation of the framework and our recommendations will further enhance the robustness and reliability of the IoT and their applications against a variety of known attacks.

/pdf/security-in-internet-of-things-challenges-solutions-and-1hc4ei6n2n.pdf

Security in Internet of Things: Challenges, Solutions and Future Directions

The Internet of Things (IoT) is a recent trend that extends the boundary of the Internet to include a wide variety of computing devices. Connecting many stand-alone IoT systems through the Internet introduces many challenges, with security being front-and-center since much of the collected information will be exposed to a wide and often unknown audience. Unfortunately, due to the intrinsic capability limits of low-end IoT devices, which account for a majority of the IoT end hosts, many traditional security methods cannot be applied to secure IoT systems, which open a door for attacks and exploits directed both against IoT services and the broader Internet. This paper addresses this issue by introducing a unified IoT framework based on the MobilityFirst future Internet architecture that explicitly focuses on supporting security for the IoT. Our design integrates local IoT systems into the global Internet without losing usability, interoperability and security protection. Specifically, we introduced an IoT middleware layer that connects heterogeneous hardware in local IoT systems to the global MobilityFirst network. We propose an IoT name resolution service (IoT-NRS) as a core component of the middleware layer, and develop a lightweight keying protocol that establishes trust between an IoT device and the IoT-NRS.

https://www.mdpi.com/1999-5903/9/3/27/pdf

A Security Framework for the Internet of Things in the Future Internet Architecture

Multi-hop routing is essential to the operation of wireless ad hoc networks. Unfortunately, it is very easy for an adversary to forge or modify routing messages to inflict severe damage on the underlying routing protocol. In this paper, we present SEAR, a Secure Efficient Ad hoc Routing protocol for ad hoc networks that is mainly based on efficient symmetric cryptography, with asymmetric cryptography used only for the distribution of initial key commitments. We show, through both theoretical examination and simulations, that SEAR provides better security with significantly less overhead than other existing secure AODV protocols.

SEAR: a secure efficient ad hoc on demand routing protocol for wireless networks

In some embodiments, the invention involves information routing in networks, and, more specifically, to defining a framework using swarm intelligence and utilization of the defined framework for routing information in the network, especially for cloud computing applications. In an embodiment, information about available information/services is pushed to network nodes using information packets (ants). Nodes requiring services send query packets (ants) and a node may send a response to a query ant when information is available. Ants may be forwarded throughout the network based on popularity of nodes, freshness of information/requests, routing table information, and requests or interest by consumer nodes captured in information routing table. Other embodiments are described and claimed.

System and method of utilizing a framework for information routing in large-scale distributed systems using swarm intelligence

Embodiments of an authorization server and method for securely reserving resources in a wireless network are generally described herein. Other embodiments may be described and claimed. In some embodiments, access points reserve bandwidth thereon through the verification of reservation tokens received from the mobile station.

Wireless local area network and methods for secure resource reservations for fast roaming

There has been considerable work addressing security in vehicular network systems for Intelligent Transportation System (ITS) usages. We examine the risks and proposed security solutions in this space. Our analysis leads to several key observations. The current security work misses many practical ITS usage and security requirements, since it fails to consider practical economic models and critical ITS functional requirements as a control system. Consequently, the standardized ITS communication message authenticity solutions have little utility relative to addressing the real threats. Furthermore, we discovered that fundamental re-thinking of the public key infrastructure support for secure vehicular communication is essential, because of the multi-stakeholder and cross-domain nature of many ITS usages. Based on our analysis, we call for future research directions in analyzing practical problems and designing solutions to secure vehicular communication in order to achieve its full potential.

Meiyuan Zhao

Papers

A Security Framework for the Internet of Things in the Future Internet Architecture

SEAR: a secure efficient ad hoc on demand routing protocol for wireless networks

System and method of utilizing a framework for information routing in large-scale distributed systems using swarm intelligence

Wireless local area network and methods for secure resource reservations for fast roaming

Security challenges for the intelligent transportation system