IoT Authentication and Security Challenges

Proceedings of ‏The 3rd International Conference on Research in Applied Science

Year: 2020

DOI:

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IoT Authentication and Security Challenges

Sitalakshmi Venkatraman, Anthony Overmars

ABSTRACT: 

Internet of things (IoT) is an emerging technology becoming integrated into our every day lives as internet-enabled devices and humans are getting interconnected seamlessly. However,  recent increase in cybersecurity breaches causes severe concerns about gaps in IoT security that could compromise mission-critical systems with a severe impact on everyone connected in an IoT network. There is a need to study the requirements of IoT security comprehensively to identify the constraints on the new computing platform where existing secrurity solutions cannot be applied. In this paper, we systematically identify the unique security and privacy requirements of IoT and the associated challenges.  We also provide the commonly adopted IoT authentication methods and the limitations in applying such existing schemes by identifying significant security vulnerabilities and possible attacks. In addition, we consider one of the most reliable cryptography-based IoT authentication mechanism and demonstrate an encryption key attack using certain properties of prime number theory. These findings provide a deeper understanding and awareness of IoT security risks. Further, our study and recommendations derived thereof open up further research towards the realisation of a more secure IoT landscape of the future.

Keywords: Internet of Things, IoT, authentication, security, encryption, crypto keys, semi-primes, key attacks.