IEEE Consumer Electronics Magazine - March/April 2020 - 24

Privacy and Security by Design

Table 2. Consumer IoT security attacks, device vulnerabilities and potential countermeasures.
Attack type

Device vulnerabilities

Potential countermeasures

Device software
failure

Integer/buffer overflows

Static/dynamic verification techniques

Node tampering
attack

Manual hardware tampering/replacement

Tamper proofing techniques (e.g., usage of PUFs)

Eavesdropping
attack

Unencrypted communication channels

Lightweight cryptographic encryption
techniques

Malicious code
injection

Lack of software integrity checks,
unsecure software APIs

Chain of trust, API endpoint security (e.g., input
validation)

Unauthorized
access

Hardware/software vulnerabilities

Timely OTA updates, secure session key
generation

Weak password protection

Strong password protection, two-factor
authentication

Open, unsecure hardware interfaces (e.g.,
JTAG, USB ports)

Secure-by-design (e.g., access restrictions,
adhering to industry standards)

Weak encryption schemes

Device identity management system, symmetric
key encryption

Social engineering
attack
Device hardware
exploitation
Malicious node
insertion

very easily extract the password from it. There is
no secret key used in this scheme; thus, anybody
knowing Base64 encode/decode public functions
can evaluate it.
There is an ever-increasing need for identity
management among IoT devices with attacks
such as malicious node insertion becoming
more common. A strong symmetric key encryption technique can be used, where only the
server and the original device know the shared
secret key.

CHALLENGES IN THE PROPOSED
COUNTERMEASURES
Based on the reviews presented in the preceding sections, we will now summarize the challenges
and opportunities associated with IoT security.
5)
1) Rigorous quality testing should be a standard practice followed by all IoT device
manufacturers. Specifically, sufficient time
and resources must be allocated for preproduct deployment testing activities. This
will help avoid the (often significant) costs
involved in recalling products that are subsequently found to be unsafe or insecure.
2) Although PUFs are a cheaper alternative to
software cryptographic solutions (and thus

well suited for IoT systems), the device manufacturers will have to carefully consider and
design the device layout to accommodate
PUF circuitry.
Lightweight encryption techniques may also
be designed and implemented for certain IoT
applications. However, when designing and
implementing lightweight security solutions,
the encryption key size and security strength
should not be compromised.
Incorporating integrity checks on many of
the exposed software APIs will lead to code
bloat, and subsequently degrading the performance of the devices. The developers
must carefully strategize on how to include
the necessary changes without adversely
affecting device performance.
It cannot be always guaranteed that a given
IoT device is always connected to the Internet. Hence, such category of devices must be
regularly monitored and patched with critical software/firmware upgrades.
Implementing security techniques like strong
password protection for security agnostic
IoT devices could incur memory and cost
overheads, although these practices are
essential in securing the network they are
part of.

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IEEE Consumer Electronics Magazine - March/April 2020

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