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Performance Impact Analysis of Securing MQTT Using TLS

Published: 09 April 2021 Publication History

Abstract

The interconnectivity of devices on the Internet of Things (IoT) provides many new and smart applications. However, the integration of many devices - especially by inexperienced users - might introduce several security threats. Further, several often used communication protocols in the IoT domain are not out-of-the-boxsecured. On the other hand, security inherently introduces overhead, resulting in a decrease in performance. The Message QueuingTelemetry Transport (MQTT) protocol is a popular communication protocol for IoT applications - for example, in Industry 4.0, railways, automotive, or smart homes. This paper analyzes the influence on performance when using MQTT with TLS in terms of throughput, connection build-up times, and energy efficiency using a reproducible testbed based on a standard off-the-shelf microcontroller. The results indicate that the impact of TLS on performance across all QoS levels depends on (i) the network situation and (ii) the connection reestablishment frequency. Thus, a negative influence of TLS on the performance is noticeable only in deteriorated networksituations or at a high connection reestablishment frequency.

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    cover image ACM Conferences
    ICPE '21: Proceedings of the ACM/SPEC International Conference on Performance Engineering
    April 2021
    301 pages
    ISBN:9781450381949
    DOI:10.1145/3427921
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    Published: 09 April 2021

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    Author Tags

    1. IoT
    2. MQTT
    3. TLS
    4. performance
    5. pub/sub

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    ICPE '21 Paper Acceptance Rate 16 of 61 submissions, 26%;
    Overall Acceptance Rate 252 of 851 submissions, 30%

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    • (2024)Designing a Secure and Scalable Service Agent for IoT Transmission through Blockchain and MQTT FusionApplied Sciences10.3390/app1407297514:7(2975)Online publication date: 1-Apr-2024
    • (2024)Security Analysis of a Decentralized, Revocable and Verifiable Attribute-Based Encryption SchemeProceedings of the 19th International Conference on Availability, Reliability and Security10.1145/3664476.3664487(1-11)Online publication date: 30-Jul-2024
    • (2024)Testing the Security and Performance of MQTT Protocol on Raspberry Pi for IoT Applications2024 IEEE Asia Pacific Conference on Wireless and Mobile (APWiMob)10.1109/APWiMob64015.2024.10792961(67-72)Online publication date: 28-Nov-2024
    • (2024)Network impact analysis on the performance of Secure Group Communication schemes with focus on IoTDiscover Data10.1007/s44248-024-00015-12:1Online publication date: 17-Sep-2024
    • (2024)Benchmarking of Secure Group Communication schemes with focus on IoTDiscover Data10.1007/s44248-024-00010-62:1Online publication date: 23-May-2024
    • (2023)MQTT-A: A Broker-Bridging P2P Architecture to Achieve Anonymity in MQTTIEEE Internet of Things Journal10.1109/JIOT.2023.326401910:17(15443-15463)Online publication date: 1-Sep-2023
    • (2023)Implementation of SSL/TLS Security with MQTT Protocol in IoT EnvironmentWireless Personal Communications: An International Journal10.1007/s11277-023-10605-y132:1(163-182)Online publication date: 25-Jul-2023
    • (2023)Simulation Secure MQTT Protocol Based on TLS in IoT-Fog Computing EnvironmentProceedings of Fourth Doctoral Symposium on Computational Intelligence10.1007/978-981-99-3716-5_2(13-21)Online publication date: 17-Sep-2023
    • (2023)Enhancing Security Mechanism of MQTT Protocol Using Payload EncryptionProceedings of International Conference on Frontiers in Computing and Systems10.1007/978-981-99-2680-0_18(199-208)Online publication date: 1-Aug-2023
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