Internet of Things (IoT) has an immense potential for a plethora of applications ranging from healthcare automation to defence networks and the power grid. The security of an IoT network is essentially paramount to the security of the underlying computing and communication infrastructure. However, due to constrained resources and limited computational capabilities, IoT networks are prone to various attacks. Thus, safeguarding the IoT network from adversarial attacks is of vital importance and can be realised through planning and deployment of effective security controls; one such control being an intrusion detection system. In this paper, we present a novel intrusion detection scheme for IoT networks that classifies traffic flow through the application of deep learning concepts. We adopt a newly published IoT dataset and generate generic features from the field information in packet level. We develop a feed-forward neural networks model for binary and multi-class classification including denial of service, distributed denial of service, reconnaissance and information theft attacks against IoT devices. Results obtained through the evaluation of the proposed scheme via the processed dataset illustrate a high classification accuracy.

Deep Learning-Based Intrusion Detection for IoT Networks

IoT technologies are becoming pervasive in public and private sectors and represent presently an integral part of our daily life. The advantages offered by these technologies are frequently coupled with serious security issues that are often not properly overseen or even ignored. The IoT threat landscape is extremely wide and complex and involves a wide variety of hardware and software technologies. In this framework, the security of application layer protocols is of paramount importance since these protocols are at the basis of the communications among applications and services running on different IoT devices and on cloud/edge infrastructures. This paper offers a comprehensive survey of application layer protocol security by presenting the main challenges and findings. More specifically, the paper focuses on the most popular protocols devised in IoT environments for messaging/data sharing and for service discovery. The main threats of these protocols as well as the Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVE) for their products and services are analyzed and discussed in detail. Good practices and measures that can be adopted to mitigate threats and attacks are also investigated. Our findings indicate that ensuring security at the application layer is very challenging. IoT devices are exposed to numerous security risks due to lack of appropriate security services in the protocols as well as to vulnerabilities or incorrect configuration of the products and services being deployed. Moreover, the constrained capabilities of these devices affect the types of security services that can be implemented.

https://www.mdpi.com/1999-5903/12/3/55/pdf

Security of IoT Application Layer Protocols: Challenges and Findings

The basic concept behind the emergence of Internet of Things (IoT) is to connect as many objects to the Internet as possible in an attempt to make our lives better in some way. However, connecting everyday objects like your car or house to the Internet can open up major security concerns. In this paper, we present a novel security framework for the Message Queue Transport Telemetry (MQTT) protocol based on publish/subscribe messages in order to enhance secure and privacy-friendly Internet of Things services. MQTT has burst onto the IoT scene in recent years due to its lightweight design and ease of use implementation necessary for IoT. Our proposed solution provides 3 security levels. The first security level suits for lightweight data exchanges of non-tampered messages. The second security level enhances the privacy protection of data sources and data receivers. The third security level offers robust long-term security with mutual authentication for all parties. The security framework is based on light cryptographic schemes in order to be suitable for constrained and small devices that are widely used in various IoT use cases. Moreover, our solution is tailored to MQTT without using additional security overhead.

A Secure Publish/Subscribe Protocol for Internet of Things

Sustained Internet of Things (IoT) deployment and functioning are heavily reliant on the use of effective data communication protocols. In the IoT landscape, the publish/subscribe-based Message Que...

/pdf/denial-of-service-attack-detection-through-machine-learning-3ma8hxwm1h.pdf

Denial of service attack detection through machine learning for the IoT

The Internet of Things is a concept that is increasingly present in our lives. The emergence of intelligent devices has led to a paradigm shift in the way technology interacts with the environment, leading society to a smarter planet. Consequently, new advanced telemetry approaches appear to connect all kinds of devices with each other, with companies, or with other networks, such as the Internet. On the road to an increasingly interconnected world, where critical devices rely on communication networks to provide an essential service, there arises the need to ensure the security and reliability of these protocols and applications. In this paper, we discuss a security-based approach for MQTT (Message Queue Telemetry Transport), which stands out as a very lightweight and widely used messaging and information exchange protocol for IoT (Internet of Things) devices throughout the world. To that end, we propose the creation of a framework that allows for performing a novel, template-based fuzzing technique on the MQTT protocol. The first experimental results showed that performance of the fuzzing technique presented here makes it a good candidate for use in network architectures with low processing power sensors, such as Smart Cities. In addition, the use of this fuzzer in widely used applications that implement MQTT has led to the discovery of several new security flaws not hitherto reported, demonstrating its usefulness as a tool for finding security vulnerabilities.

/pdf/mqtt-security-a-novel-fuzzing-approach-50qd2tausb.pdf

MQTT Security: A Novel Fuzzing Approach

In this paper, we propose a simple security framework for MQTT (for short, AugMQTT) by incorporating the AugPAKE protocol [16]. As a distinguishing feature, AugMQTT does not require any certificate validation checks and certificate revocation checks on both publishers/subscribers and broker sides. Also, we discuss several aspects of AugMQTT followed by performance overhead of the AugPAKE protocol. Finally, we explain implementation details of AugMQTT that makes use of MQTT open source project Mosquitto 1.4.9 [8] in order to incorporate the AugPAKE protocol.

Weicheng Huang

Papers

A security framework for MQTT