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IoT Security Configurability with Security-by-Contract
Örebro University, School of Science and Technology. (Centre for Applied Autonomous Sensors Systems (AASS))ORCID iD: 0000-0001-9293-7711
Örebro University, School of Science and Technology. DTU Compute, Technical University of Denmark, Lyngby, Denmark. (Centre for Applied Autonomous Sensors Systems (AASS))ORCID iD: 0000-0001-9575-2990
Department of Information Science and Engineering, University of Trento, Trento, Italy.
2019 (English)In: Sensors, E-ISSN 1424-8220, Vol. 19, no 19, article id E4121Article in journal (Refereed) Published
Abstract [en]

Cybersecurity is one of the biggest challenges in the Internet of Things (IoT) domain, as well as one of its most embarrassing failures. As a matter of fact, nowadays IoT devices still exhibit various shortcomings. For example, they lack secure default configurations and sufficient security configurability. They also lack rich behavioural descriptions, failing to list provided and required services. To answer this problem, we envision a future where IoT devices carry behavioural contracts and Fog nodes store network policies. One requirement is that contract consistency must be easy to prove. Moreover, contracts must be easy to verify against network policies. In this paper, we propose to combine the security-by-contract (S × C) paradigm with Fog computing to secure IoT devices. Following our previous work, first we formally define the pillars of our proposal. Then, by means of a running case study, we show that we can model communication flows and prevent information leaks. Last, we show that our contribution enables a holistic approach to IoT security, and that it can also prevent unexpected chains of events.

Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
MDPI, 2019. Vol. 19, no 19, article id E4121
Keywords [en]
Fog computing, IoT, configurability, security, security-by-contract
National Category
Computer Systems
Identifiers
URN: urn:nbn:se:oru:diva-76829DOI: 10.3390/s19194121ISI: 000494823200065PubMedID: 31548501Scopus ID: 2-s2.0-85072578077OAI: oai:DiVA.org:oru-76829DiVA, id: diva2:1355594
Available from: 2019-09-30 Created: 2019-09-30 Last updated: 2022-02-10Bibliographically approved
In thesis
1. Securing the Internet of Things with Security-by-Contract
Open this publication in new window or tab >>Securing the Internet of Things with Security-by-Contract
2021 (English)Doctoral thesis, comprehensive summary (Other academic)
Abstract [en]

Smart homes, industry, healthcare, robotics; virtually every market has seen the uprising of Internet of Things (IoT) devices with different degrees and nuances. IoT devices embody different desirable characteristics, such as mobility, ubiquity, variety, and affordability. All combined, these features made so that IoT devices reached 35 billion units in the world. However, the sudden uprising of market demand put enormous pressure on manufacturers. The necessity of delivering to customers as many devices as possible, in the shortest time possible, leads manufacturers to overlook features that are not perceived critical by the users, such as resiliency to cyberattacks. This led to severe security issues. The prime example is Mirai, a malware that infected hundreds of thousands of IoT devices in 2016 and used them to strike lethal Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks.

In the first part of this thesis, we present the state of the art regarding IoT devices security resilience. In particular, we provide relevant examples of breaches, an analysis of the relationship between IoT and Cloud from a security point of view, and an example of an IoT device penetration test. Then, we focus on the usage of IoT devices in DDoS-enabled botnets and we provide an extensive study of DDoS-enabling malwares, discussing their evolution and their capabilities.

In the second part, we contextualise the gathered knowledge and we show that the highlighted problems stem from two main causes: insecure configurations and insufficient secure configurability.We also show that, to address these two issues, it is necessary to equip IoT devices with precise and formal descriptions of their behaviour. Therefore, we propose SC4IoT, a security framework for IoT devices that combines Security-by-Contract (SC) paradigm and Fog Computing paradigm. First, we provide a thorough breakdown of our proposal. We start from high-level lifecycles that describe how devices participate to SC4IoT. Then, we discuss the pillars that compose the framework (e.g., security contracts and security policies), together with their formal descriptions. Last, we provide precise algorithms for achieving security-policy matching capabilities, as well as routines for allowing the framework to deal with dynamic changes while maintaining consistency.

Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
Örebro: Örebro University, 2021. p. 55
Series
Örebro Studies in Technology, ISSN 1650-8580 ; 90
National Category
Computer Sciences
Identifiers
urn:nbn:se:oru:diva-88151 (URN)978-91-7529-364-6 (ISBN)
Public defence
2021-01-29, Örebro universitet, Långhuset, Hörsal L2 (and online (zoom)), Fakultetsgatan 1, Örebro, 13:00 (English)
Opponent
Supervisors
Available from: 2020-12-18 Created: 2020-12-18 Last updated: 2021-01-08Bibliographically approved

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Giaretta, AlbertoDragoni, Nicola

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