Securing Low-Resource Edge Devices for IoT Systems

Abstract

Security aspects of IoT systems are not wellunderstood. Therefore, the rapid adoption of IoT technologies may create many exposed computer systems with new security vulnerabilities and IoT applications from a variety of domains may face severe security holes. Edge-devices contribute significantly to security risks for IoT systems. Edge-devices are resource-constrained, wireless-enabled microcontrollers typically running primitive operating systems. The resource-constrained nature of edge devices in tandem with IoT network protocols creates many unique security challenges. This paper examines key security issues in an IoT systems with a special emphasis on edge devices. A commercial IoT edge-device using MQTT (+TLS) and CoAP (+DTLS) protocols was used to analyze the impact of these security concerns. This chosen edge device was found to be susceptible to sync attacks, data injection, passive reconnaissance, and malicious nodes. Securing nodes using TLS/DTLS resulted in only 4.7% overhead for MQTT with the varying QoS levels, and 5% for CoAP.