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

A special issue of Applied Sciences (ISSN 2076-3417). This special issue belongs to the section "Computing and Artificial Intelligence".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: 20 June 2024 | Viewed by 1202

Special Issue Editor


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Guest Editor
School of Computing, Engineering & the Built Environment, Edinburgh Napier University, Edinburgh EH10 5DT, UK
Interests: Internet of Things; IoT security; cyber security; routing protocols and cross-layer design; blockchain; machine learning; wireless body area networks; and e-health and wireless networks
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Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Over the last decade, the Internet-of-Things (IoT) has made the leap from conceptual to actual, paving the way for a wide range of applications and digital services, such as smart homes and cities, smart grids, wearables, connected healthcare, and environmental monitoring, resulting in unprecedented levels of connectivity across the world. IoT networks comprise a slew of embedded sensor devices with limited processing, storage, and power, resources interlinked by various interconnects that often exhibit considerable unreliability, low data rates, and instability. The limited resources of IoT devices coupled with the constraints imposed by their interconnects have raised numerous security challenges that need to be tackled to pave the way for wider adoption of IoT. In addition, the manufacturers of IoT devices usually overlook security, rendering their released products vulnerable to attacks. These security issues are further complicated by the heterogeneity of IoT networks and devices, thus increasing the difficulty of deploying all-inclusive security solutions. Accordingly,  it is crucial to devise solutions that address such security gaps, a field that is attracting overwhelming attention from researchers. Hence, this Special Issue aims to bring together novel contributions and recent advances from both academia and industry in the field of IoT security. 

Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:

  • Secure IoT communication protocols and technologies; 
  • Intrusion detection systems for IoT; 
  • Threat modeling and risk assessment in IoT; 
  • Malware detection in IoT; 
  • Privacy-preserving techniques for IoT;
  • Novel attacks in IoT and related countermeasures;
  • Lightweight and Homomorphic security protocols for IoT; 
  • ML-based intrusion detection in IoT;
  • Security protocols in 5G/6G IoT networks; 
  • Secure protocols for IoT standards (IPv6, 6LoWPAN, RPL, 6TiSCH, etc.).

Dr. Baraq Ghaleb
Guest Editor

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Keywords

  • secure IoT communication protocols and technologies
  • intrusion detection systems for IoT
  • threat modeling and risk assessment in IoT
  • malware detection in IoT
  • privacy-preserving techniques for IoT
  • novel attacks in IoT and related countermeasures
  • lightweight and Homomorphic security protocols for IoT
  • ML-based intrusion detection in IoT
  • security protocols in 5G/6G IoT networks
  • secure protocols for IoT standards (IPv6, 6LoWPAN, RPL, 6TiSCH, etc.)

Published Papers (1 paper)

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Research

29 pages, 2188 KiB  
Article
A Lightweight Mitigation Approach against a New Inundation Attack in RPL-Based IoT Networks
by Mehdi Rouissat, Mohammed Belkheir, Ibrahim S. Alsukayti and Allel Mokaddem
Appl. Sci. 2023, 13(18), 10366; https://doi.org/10.3390/app131810366 - 16 Sep 2023
Cited by 2 | Viewed by 844
Abstract
Internet of Things (IoT) networks are being widely deployed for a broad range of critical applications. Without effective security support, such a trend would open the doors to notable security challenges. Due to their inherent constrained characteristics, IoT networks are highly vulnerable to [...] Read more.
Internet of Things (IoT) networks are being widely deployed for a broad range of critical applications. Without effective security support, such a trend would open the doors to notable security challenges. Due to their inherent constrained characteristics, IoT networks are highly vulnerable to the adverse impacts of a wide scope of IoT attacks. Among these, flooding attacks would cause great damage given the limited computational and energy capacity of IoT devices. However, IETF-standardized IoT routing protocols, such as the IPv6 Routing Protocol for Low Power and Lossy Networks (RPL), have no relevant security-provision mechanism. Different variants of the flooding attack can be easily initiated in RPL networks to exhaust network resources and degrade overall network performance. In this paper, a novel variant referred to as the Destination Information Object Flooding (DIOF) attack is introduced. The DIOF attack involves an internal malicious node disseminating falsified information to instigate excessive transmissions of DIO control messages. The results of the experimental evaluation demonstrated the significant adverse impact of DIOF attacks on control overhead and energy consumption, which increased by more than 500% and 210%, respectively. A reduction of more than 32% in Packet Delivery Ratio (PDR) and an increase of more than 192% in latency were also experienced. These were more evident in cases in which the malicious node was in close proximity to the sink node. To effectively address the DIOF attack, we propose a new lightweight approach based on a collaborative and distributed security scheme referred to as DIOF-Secure RPL (DSRPL). It provides an effective solution, enhancing RPL network resilience against DIOF attacks with only simple in-protocol modifications. As the experimental results indicated, DSRPL guaranteed responsive detection and mitigation of the DIOF attacks in a matter of a few seconds. Compared to RPL attack scenarios, it also succeeded in reducing network overhead and energy consumption by more than 80% while maintaining QoS performance at satisfactory levels. Full article
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