International Journal of Computer and Applications

There has been a tremendous growth in the number of smart devices and their applications (e.g., smart sensors, wearable devices, smart phones, smart cars, etc.) in use in our everyday lives. This is accompanied by a new form of interconnection between the physical and digital worlds, commonly known as the Internet of Things (IoT). This is a paradigm shift, where anything and everything can be interconnected via a communication medium. In such systems, security is a prime concern and protecting the resources (e.g., applications and services) from unauthorized access needs appropriately designed security and privacy solutions. Building secure systems for the IoT can only be achieved through a thorough understanding of the particular needs of such systems. The state of the art is lacking a systematic analysis of the security requirements for the IoT. Motivated by this, in this paper, we present a systematic approach to understand the security requirements for the IoT, which will help designing secure IoT systems for the future. In developing these requirements, we provide different scenarios and outline potential threats and attacks within the IoT. Based on the characteristics of the IoT, we group the possible threats and attacks into five areas, namely communications, device/services, users, mobility and integration of resources. We then examine the existing security requirements for IoT presented in the literature and detail our approach for security requirements for the IoT. We argue that by adhering to the proposed requirements, an IoT system can be designed securely by achieving much of the promised benefits of scalability, usability, connectivity, and flexibility in a practical and comprehensive manner.

Security Requirements for the Internet of Things: A Systematic Approach.

Pervasive computing constitutes a growing trend, aiming to embed smart devices into everyday objects. The limited resources of these devices and the ever-present need for lower production costs, lead to the research and development of lightweight cryptographic mechanisms. Block ciphers, the main symmetric key cryptosystems, perform well in this field. Nevertheless, stream ciphers are also relevant in ubiquitous computing applications, as they can be used to secure the communication in applications where the plaintext length is either unknown or continuous, like network streams. This paper provides the latest survey of stream ciphers for embedded systems. Lightweight implementations of stream ciphers in embedded hardware and software are examined as well as relevant authenticated encryption schemes. Their speed and simplicity enable compact and low-power implementations, allow them to excel in applications pertaining to resource-constrained devices. The outcomes of the International Organization for Standardization/International Electrotechnical Commission 29192-3 standard and the cryptographic competitions eSTREAM and Competition for Authenticated Encryption: Security, Applicability, and Robustness are summarized along with the latest results in the field. However, cryptanalysis has proven many of these schemes are actually insecure. From the 31 designs that are examined, only six of them have been found to be secure by independent cryptanalysis. A constrained benchmark analysis is performed on low-cost embedded hardware and software platforms. The most appropriate and secure solutions are then mapped in different types of applications. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

A survey of lightweight stream ciphers for embedded systems

Grain [11] is a lightweight stream cipher proposed by M. Hell, T. Johansson, and W. Meier to the eSTREAM call for stream cipher proposals of the European project ECRYPT [5]. Its 160-bit internal state is divided into a LFSR and an NFSR of length 80 bits each. A filtering boolean function is used to derive each keystream bit from the internal state. By combining linear approximations of the feedback function of the NFSR and of the filtering function, it is possible to derive linear approximation equations involving the keystream and the LFSR initial state. We present a key recovery attack against Grain which requires 2 43 computations and 2 38 keystream bits to determine the 80-bit key.

Cryptanalysis of Grain

Given the ongoing transition towards a more decentralised and adaptive energy system, the potential of blockchain-enabled smart contracts for the energy sector is being increasingly recognised. Due to their self-executing, customisable and tamper-proof nature, they are seen as a key technology for enabling the transition to a more efficient, transparent and transactive energy market. The applications of smart contracts include coordination of smart electric vehicle charging, automated demand-side response, peer-to-peer energy trading and allocation of the control duties amongst the network operators. Nevertheless, their use in the energy sector is still in its early stages as there are many open challenges related to security, privacy, scalability and billing. In this paper, we systematically review 178 peer-reviewed publications and 13 innovation projects, providing a thorough analysis of the strengths and weaknesses of smart contracts used in the energy sector. This work offers a broad perspective on the opportunities and challenges that stakeholders using this technology face, in both current and emergent markets, such as peer-to-peer energy trading platforms. To provide a roadmap for researchers and practitioners interested in the technology, we propose a systematic model of the smart contracting process, by developing a novel 6-layer architecture, as well as presenting a sample energy contract in pseudocode form and as open-source code. Our analysis focuses on the two mainstream application areas we identify for smart contract use in this area: energy and flexibility trading, and distributed control. The paper concludes with a comprehensive, critical discussion of the advantages and challenges that must be addressed in the area of smart contracts and blockchains in energy, and a set of recommendations that researchers and developers should consider when applying smart contracts to energy system settings. 

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.rser.2021.112013

Smart contracts in energy systems: A systematic review of fundamental approaches and implementations

Internet of Things (IoT) is an emerging technique for connecting heterogeneous technologies related to our daily needs that can affect our lives tremendously. Many architectures and applications have been proposed and implemented using IoT platform from a simple supply chain to complex life support systems. There are many obvious benefits of such networks but these systems can cause great danger to finance and life if compromised. Such issues are hindering the mass adaptation of IoT. This requires a strong architecture that can provide strong user authentication, access control as well as privacy and trust to the users of the system. The IoT network is a heterogeneous network connecting many small hardware constraint devices and also where traditional security architectures and techniques cannot be applied. Therefore, it requires a different set of specialized techniques and architecture to provide security to the IoT network. This paper focuses on the security requirements, current state of art as well as future directions in the field of IoT.

Internet of Things (IoT) Enabling Technologies, Requirements, and Security Challenges

The land registry system is one of the very important department in any governance system that stores the records of land ownership. There are various issues and loopholes in the existing system that give rise to corruption and disputes. This requires a significant chunk of valuable government resources from judiciary and law enforcement agencies in settling these issues. Blockchain technology has the potential to counter these loopholes and sort out the issues related with land registry system like tempering of records, trading of the same piece of land to more than one buyer. In this paper, a secure and reliable framework for land registry system using Blockchain has been proposed. The proposed framework uses the concept of smart contract at various stages of the land registry and gives an algorithm for pre-agreement. First, we describe the conventional land registry system and reviews the issues in it. Then, we outline the potential benefits of employing Blockchain technology in the land registry system and presented a framework. Finally, a number of case studies are presented.

Blockchain-based framework for secure and reliable land registry system

The idea to connect everything to anything and at any point of time is what vaguely defines the concept of Internet of Things (IoT). The concept of IoT is not only about providing connectivity but also facilitating interaction among these connected things. Though the term IoT was introduced in 1999 but has drawn significant attention during the past few years. The pace at which new devices are being integrated into the system will profoundly impact the world in a good way but also poses some serious threats with regard to security and privacy. IoT in its current form is susceptible to a multitudinous set of attacks. One of the greatest concerns of IoT is to provide security assurance for the data exchange because data is vulnerable to a number of attacks by the attackers at each layer of IoT. The IoT has layered structure, where each layer provides a service. The security vary from layer to layer as each layer serves a different purpose. The aim of this paper is to analyze the various security and privacy threats related to IoT. Furthermore, this paper also discusses numerous existing security protocols operating at different layers, potential attacks, and suggested countermeasures.

Security Threats, Attacks, and Possible Countermeasures in Internet of Things

Self-sovereign identity for healthcare using blockchain

Cloud computing is the latest and rapidly growing technology that has brought new changes and opportunities in the field of education and IT industries. Consequently, e-learning emphasizes more on technology to transform and provide training and education to learners. E-learning system using cloud computing platform introduces efficient and effective learning mechanism. In this paper, we briefly discuss the effectiveness of cloud-based e-learning along with its issues, challenges, and benefits. The analysis suggests that the cloud computing platform for e-learning is quite feasible and effective that brings greater clarity landscape anent to cloud computing assistances. Study of several cloud-based e-learning tools has been done on the basis of scalability, types of services, shareable content object reference model (SCORM), prices, usability, etc. Some e-learning trends of 2017 have been presented in last.

Shadab Alam

Papers

Internet of Things (IoT) Enabling Technologies, Requirements, and Security Challenges

Blockchain-based framework for secure and reliable land registry system

Security Threats, Attacks, and Possible Countermeasures in Internet of Things

Self-sovereign identity for healthcare using blockchain

Cloud-Based E-Learning: Using Cloud Computing Platform for an Effective E-Learning