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Security and privacy in the Internet of Things: threats and challenges

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Abstract

In the past few years, the Internet of Things (IoT) has emerged, grown and gradually affected the daily lives of human beings in many new application domains, ranging from wearable devices, smart manufacturing, to smart homes and ambient intelligence just to mention a few. However, realizing the full potential of IoT while ensuring user security and privacy remains an open research challenge. Existing security solutions and techniques are mainly conceived for centralized and distributed information systems and are not directly applicable to IoT-based systems. In fact, IoT systems have unconventional characteristics such as intermittent connectivity, high scalability, dynamic changes and limited resources and thus require a paradigm shift to develop innovative security and privacy solutions. In this survey, we firstly give an overview of security and privacy in IoT. After defining the context of IoT systems, we identify four main characteristics, which imply unprecedented threats and challenges to existing security solutions and techniques. From the perspective of these characteristics and IoT security requirements, we identify and elaborate specific threats and challenges related to the radio-frequency identification (RFID), wireless sensor networks (WSNs) and mobile delay tolerant networks (MDTNs), which are building blocks in many IoT-based systems. In addition, we discuss potential countermeasures to handle IoT threats and challenges.

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Funding

This research work is supported by the IndustryXchange seed Grant, Pennsylvania State University and the Research Council (TRC), Sultanate of Oman (Block Fund-Research Grant)

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. The Pennsylvania State University, Malvern, USA

    Youakim Badr

  2. INSA Lyon, LIRIS, UMR5205, University Lyon, Villeurbanne, France

    Xiaoyang Zhu

  3. Dhofar University, Salalah, Sultanate of Oman

    Mansour Naser Alraja

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  1. Youakim Badr
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  2. Xiaoyang Zhu
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Contributions

Y.B. initiated the research. X.Z wrote the original draft preparation. Y.B wrote, reviewed, edited and prepared revised versions. Y.B. and X.Z. have contributed equally. M.A. wrote, reviewed and prepared the final version. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.

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Correspondence to Youakim Badr.

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Badr, Y., Zhu, X. & Alraja, M.N. Security and privacy in the Internet of Things: threats and challenges. SOCA 15, 257–271 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11761-021-00327-z

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