Internet-of-Things Security and Vulnerabilities: Case Study
Internet-of-Things Security and Vulnerabilities: Case Study
Internet-of-Things Security and Vulnerabilities: Case Study
To cite this article: Ghaida Alqarawi, Bashayer Alkhalifah, Najla Alharbi & Salim El Khediri (2022):
Internet-of-Things Security and Vulnerabilities: Case Study, Journal of Applied Security Research,
DOI: 10.1080/19361610.2022.2031841
ABSTRACT KEYWORDS
The incorporation of IoT in the world has had tremendous Internet of things; IoT
popularity in the field of Technology. This great innovation security; cyber security
has enabled seamless transformation in business and oper- vulnerabilities; attacks
ation transformation. However, significant usage of this innov-
ation also poses a security threat which has become a more
critical point of concern to many businesses across the globe.
Many companies that depend on IoT have faced security
breaches and threats. The IoT countermeasures have not been
well-factored upon, which poses a more significant challenge
to many organizations that heavily rely on this technology. In
this survey, we propose a security survey that will help tackle
the problems associated with IoT and offer security solutions
on all the IoT layers. The results show that authentication is
the most critical security measure to implement in IoT.
Introduction
The internet of things (IoT) connects (heterogenous) physical devices to
the internet, allowing information to be sent and received via the internet.
In 1999, the concept of IoT was first used by Kevin Ashton (Ogonji et al.,
2020). The IoT term has evolved into various technologies like sensors,
real-time analysis, machine learning, and embedded systems. It’s all about
the smart hospital idea and other devices controlled via wireless or fixed
internet. Smart devices can acquire data and share data in everyday life to
do the required task (Javaid & Khan, 2021). IoT applications apply to smart
cities, devices, cars, connected healthcare, homes, and entertainment
systems. According to cisco research, roughly 500 billion gadgets will use
sensors and be connected to the internet by 2030.it is said that the IoT is
the network that associates these devices for data communication (Aman
et al., 2020; Alqallaf, 2021).
There are still security concerns due to many devices being connected to
the internet and the large amount of data associated with it. Notably, in
sectors with systems critical to the safety of individuals and the community
at large, for example, smart transportation systems and connected cars
must be secure to avoid accidents and injuries and safeguard the privacy of
drivers who may be tracked on the road roads (Obaidat et al., 2020).
Security on IoT refers to the degree of protection of, or resilience to, IoT
applications and infrastructure. These devices have become an easy target
for intruders since they heavily rely on external resources and thus are
often left unattended. Once the network layer has been compromised, it
becomes very easy for cyber attackers and hackers to easily gain access and
control of a device and use the device to attack other close devices through
the compromised network node. A recent study conducted by HP showed
that 70% of all the devices on the internet are easily vulnerable to attack
(Kumar et al., 2016).
With the increasing developments in IoT, security continues to be an
important issue, and concerns will continue to arise. However, in 2021,
there will be even more opportunities for new techniques to make IoT
devices more secure. Most existing techniques for securing the IoT do not
focus on the new types of security risks IoT infrastructure may face.
Therefore, they cannot detect vulnerabilities or attacks that might originate
from the IoT service. Moreover, very few existing works have investigated
the different layers of the IoT infrastructure as a whole.
Motivation
The primary goal of this survey is to evaluate the security issues that are
found in the IoT devices and also evaluate the privacy issues that exist in
IoT applications. The survey discussed the IoT technologies and architec-
ture model, identified security and privacy issues in the IoT system, and
provided a taxonomy of attacks based on the IoT layer models.
presents the solutions proposed to solve the related security issues. The
paper is concluded in section Conclusion.
Background of IoT
With the growth of technology and advancement in the Internet across the
globe, many innovative solutions and names for the Internet have come
into existence. Various phases have led to the tremendous growth of the
Internet across the globe. The first phase which was given the name Pre-
internet phase entailed the communication of people over a fixed telephone
booth that used a telephone line channel and Short Message Service form.
In the later stages, the medium of communication was then upgraded to
incorporate a mobile telephony device. The second phase of internet
communication was called the Internet of Content Phases, which entailed
sending large-sized messages through an email channel medium. This
phase allowed the capability of incorporating attachments, entertainment,
and information data.
The Third phase of internet communication was called the Internet of
Services phase, which mainly focused on electronic media applications.
This included the uses of e-commerce and e-productivity. The fourth
phase, which was referred to as the Internet of people, is the state upon
which people associated with each other directly through social media plat-
forms and other mediums of communications platforms like YouTube,
Skype, and Facebook.
The current phase is the IoT. The future will have a functional model
aspect that will enable the connection of devices over the Internet. This
will enable the devices to communicate amongst each other and connect
and perform various programmed activities based on the design and func-
tional capabilities of various data objects. However, the current era is not
the end of the road for this concept. Artificial Intelligence is the future of
communication. Incorporating this technology in devices will have a new
dimension in the era of communication. However, it may not be incorrect
to term the incoming phase as the IoT phases powered by Figure 1 shown,
but how the use of the IoT has evolved from the Internet. By starting from
scientists, engineers, and researchers from various technical areas, it has
1. Perception layer:
This is the lowest layer of the IoT model architecture. It is mainly
referred to as the brain of four-layered architecture and is also called
the physical layer. The sensing devices, i.e., sensors, are mainly found in
this layer. Also referred to as the sensor layer (Kumar et al., 2016).
2. Network layer:
This layer holds the network communications software and the physical
Perception layer
The first layer, also referred to as the Physical IoT sensor, helps to support
the collection of data and processing. It incorporates the use of various
technologies like RFID (radio-frequency identification) and GPS systems.
This layer is mainly made up of sensors and actuators that help to provide
various measurements (Frustaci et al., 2018). The attacks at the perception
layer mainly aim to destroy and inhibit communication and collection
of data.
Tag cloning
Tag cloning technique involves attaching tags to various objects and their
data components to read and modify them using hacking techniques.
6 G. ALQARAWI ET AL.
Attackers make a replica of tags and compromise the system reader in that
it cannot differentiate between a compromised and the original tag (Robles
& Endencio-Robles, 2019).
Eavesdropping
The IoT applications mainly consist of a group of nodes deployed in open
settings, which makes them vulnerable to eavesdropping. During the trans-
mission and authentication steps, the attacker may be able to collect data
(Hassija et al., 2019).
RF jamming
The RF waves are delivered to the network in this attack to disrupt com-
munication between the tags and readers. By interfering with all the signals
within its range, attackers might use RF jamming to prevent readers from
communicating with all tags (Rahimi et al., 2018).
JOURNAL OF APPLIED SECURITY RESEARCH 7
Spoofing attack
This form of attack enables an attacker to gain and have full access to the
IoT systems. After gaining full access to the system, the attacker will then
send malicious data into the systems. This firm of attack includes the RFID
spoofing form of attack where an attacker fakes and records the facts of an
aerial RFID tag and then later transfer malicious data into the IoT device
using the tag identification technique (Kamble & Bhutad, 2018).
Network layer
The network layer is the next tier, following the perception layer in the IoT
layer’s architecture. The network layer is in charge of providing informa-
tion security as well as enabling network transmission. Mobile devices, the
internet, and cloud computing are all part of it. Wireless sensor networks
make up the network layer (WSN) (Shruthi & Vinay, 2016).
DoS Attack
The devices or servers are overburdened to the point that they cannot pro-
vide service to those who require it. DoS attacks prevent data from being
transferred between devices and their source. The gadget receives an over-
flow of data, which causes it to shut down its processes. A good example is
the seizure of health information systems and services implemented in a
low bandwidth capacity environment. There exist risks of life-threatening
scenarios, and commercial losses are associated with IoT networks (Kumar
et al., 2016).
Sybil attacks
To confuse nodes, a malicious node offers several identities to the network,
making an adversary appear to be present in multiple positions/locations
simultaneously. The “sybil attacks” are a type of attack. In a spectrum
where all nodes participate collaboratively in decision making, an attacker
can provide incorrect sensing information, resulting in incorrect sensing
decisions, allowing unneeded false information to travel down the entire
node chain via the pus channels. The node employs its identity validation
8 G. ALQARAWI ET AL.
mechanism to counteract this attack, which employs both direct and indir-
ect validation methods. Indirect validation, each node verifies the validity
of the identities of the others. Indirect validation, on the other hand, allows
other confirmed nodes to validate other nodes. By owning a unique key
shared only with the base station, all participating nodes must confirm
their identities (Shruthi & Vinay, 2016).
Sinkhole attacks
Because CRNs primarily use multi-hop routing, malicious nodes find it
simple to attack legal nodes in hops. According to the sinkhole attack scen-
ario, the attacker will portray himself as the best route provider to a given
target, which is usually a low latency route. When other legal nodes use
this bogus route to deliver data packets, the attacker either misuses or
discards the packet from the network. The attacker can exploit the packet
to carry out a variety of assaults, including eavesdropping, modifying infor-
mation in the packet and resending it, and selectively forwarding packets
from specific nodes (Tuan et al., 2020).
Blackhole attack
In this form of attack, the network traffic is routed to a specific node that
does not exist in the network in this attack. Packets are thus dropped as a
result of this, resulting in significant data loss. A Security Aware Routing
(SAR) protocol is then used for WSNs to prevent the blackhole attack
(Prabu et al., 2015).
JOURNAL OF APPLIED SECURITY RESEARCH 9
Man-in-the-middle attack
This form of attack is similar to eavesdropping attacks. The communication
channel where unauthorized users are present is the target of an attack.
The communication between the user and the device can be monitored
and controlled by the user. Two other people, Unauthorized users, can also
take advantage of this feature. Assume the victim’s identity and then
obtains information via communication across the channel (Shruthi &
Vinay, 2016).
Middleware layer
Attackers can affect the application layer by attacking the middleware layer,
which provides services to the application layer. This form of attack on the
server and database affects both the information and operation functional-
ity of the system. The Attacks on the cloud servers mainly focus on virtual-
ization and big data, which pose a significant threat to user privacy.
Flooding attack
This attack sends much useless traffic through the network, making the tar-
get system unreachable (Khader & Eleyan, 2021). The damage done by an
attack went beyond server outages and flooded websites; it also caused con-
sumers to lose confidence in the service industry (Vishwakarma &
Jain, 2020).
SQL injection
This foam of attacks occurs at the SQL queries and updates. This attack
occurs due to additional instructions injected into the database’s queries,
10 G. ALQARAWI ET AL.
Application layer
The application layer helps in the delivery of on-demand tasks and services
to the user. This layer also processes the network layer’s data. Software
assaults and lifetime permissions are the principal threats to this layer.
These attacks aim to access IoT users’ sensitive information, resulting in
data confidentiality and privacy violations (Obaidat et al., 2020).
Code injection
This attack involves injecting malicious code into the system by taking
advantage of program faults (Chen et al., 2018). The main goal of code
injection is to obtain passwords, reveal confidential information, gain sys-
tem access, steal data, or spread worms to the IoT devices and thus infect
others nodes in the system. The most prevalent types of code injection are
html and script injections (Obaidat et al., 2020).
Buffer overflow
A buffer overflow also referred to as a buffer overrun, is a type of attack
that allows an attacker to write more data into a buffer than the buffer’s
capacity allows. The real aim is to overwrite the existing data in the buffer
with malicious code that will allow them to take control of the entire
machine. Stack overflow and global data area overflow are some instances
of these assaults. Typically, assembly code is used by the attacker to carry
out such an attack. These assaults are designed to compromise a system’s
integrity and validity. Their influence is “significant,” and the likelihood of
occurrence is “possible.” Secure programming is an effective countermeas-
ure against this attack (Grammatikis et al., 2019).
Phishing attack
The attacker acquires confidential information, such as usernames and
passwords (Deogirikar & Vidhate, 2017). The fake website will be spread
by online advertising, email, and pop-ups. Suppose customers trust this
website and enter their credentials to access their accounts. In that case,
they have handed phishers their personal information, and they are led to
the main website via a ploy not to doubt the scenario. The fake websites’
addresses are similarly identical to the actual site (Ghasemi et al., 2019).
Countermeasures
IoT threats are being explored by researchers all over the world. New
methods and solutions are suggested. This section examines the many
methodological and inventive approaches used by various researchers to
improve IoT security. Tables 1, 2 show how we categorized the solutions
depending on layers.
Tables 1, 2 show different types of attacks on each layer and the counter-
measures. In addition, as can be seen in the table, security authentication is
one of the main ways to prevent most attacks in a multilayer IoT.
However, attacks can be initiated on the IoT system based on the
layer categories.
In an IoT system, the perception layer is the most vulnerable layer.
Attacks are very prevalent in this layer. However, at the network layer,
attacks can still occur. At the middle layer, an attacker can easily initiate an
attack on the IoT system. The application layer can easily be exploited in
the entire IoT system.
With the growth of technology, attackers have devised new sophisticated
methods that can be used to attack IoT systems. There is a need for an
organization to implement new strategies for protecting the IoT systems
due to the ever-evolving nature of technology. IoT security is becoming a
significant challenge to any organization due to proper standardization
authentication measures. The implemented security strategies are not feas-
ible to one another, which poses a new channel for attackers to target this
system. Thus, there is a need for proper standardization for IoT systems.
The IoT network nodes don’t have the security measures to handle
Table 1. IoT issue attacks and countermeasures at perception and network layer.
12
Conclusion
IoT innovation has had tremendous growth and revolution in the technol-
ogy world. As with any network technology, it has had its security chal-
lenge. Security threats are still very prevalent in IoT systems. These threats
have hindered its development from incorporating full-proof security sys-
tems. In this report, we have described and outlined the four layers of the
IoT system and then highlighted the security threats associated with various
layers.
Furthermore, we evaluated the security countermeasures that can be
implemented and adopted to prevent and secure the IoT architecture sys-
tem of any security threats. We also recommended some security measures
to enhance and improve the IoT network architecture and make it more
secure. There is a need to implement security measures that should play a
key role in safeguarding the IoT system to improve its performance,
efficiency, and effectiveness.
ORCID
Salim El Khediri http://orcid.org/0000-0002-9765-1605
References
Ahemd, M. M., Shah, M. A., & Wahid, A. (2017, April). IoT security: A layered approach
for attacks & defenses. In 2017 International Conference on Communication Technologies
(ComTech) (pp. 104–110). IEEE. https://doi.org/10.1109/COMTECH.2017.8065757
Alansari, Z., Anuar, N. B., Kamsin, A., Belgaum, M. R., Alshaer, J., Soomro, S., & Miraz,
M. H. (2018, August). Internet of things: Infrastructure, architecture, security and priv-
acy. In 2018 International Conference on Computing, Electronics & Communications
Engineering (iCCECE) (pp. 150–155). IEEE. https://doi.org/10.1109/iCCECOME.2018.
8658516
Alqallaf, M. (2021). Towards a safe and secure internet of things critical infrastructure.
International Journal of Computer Science and Information Security, 19(2).
Aman, A. H. M., Yadegaridehkordi, E., Attarbashi, Z. S., Hassan, R., & Park, Y. J. (2020).
A survey on trend and classification of internet of things reviews. IEEE Access, 8,
111763–111782.
Aziz, T., & Haq, E.-U. (2018). Security challenges facing IoT layers and its protective meas-
ures. International Journal of Computer Applications, 179(27), 31–35. https://doi.org/10.
5120/ijca2018916607
Bedi, A., Pandey, N., & Khatri, S. K. (2019, February). Analysis of detection and prevention
of malware in cloud computing environment. In 2019 Amity International Conference on
JOURNAL OF APPLIED SECURITY RESEARCH 15
Jha, R., Kour, K., Kumar, H., & Jain, M. (2021). Layer based security in narrow band
Internet of Things (NB-IoT). Computer Networks, 185, 107592. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.
comnet.2020.107592
Kamble, A., & Bhutad, S. (2018, January). Survey on internet of things (IOT) security issues
& solutions. In 2018 2nd International Conference on Inventive Systems and Control
(ICISC) (pp. 307–312). IEEE. https://doi.org/10.1109/ICISC.2018.8399084
Karlof, C., & Wagner, D. (2003). Secure routing in wireless sensor networks: attacks and
countermeasures. Ad Hoc Networks, 1(2–3), 293–315. https://doi.org/10.1016/S1570-
8705(03)00008-8
Khader, R., & Eleyan, D. (2021). Survey of DoS/DDoS attacks in IOT. Sustainable
Engineering and Innovation, 3(1), 23–28. https://doi.org/10.37868/sei.v3i1.124
Khanna, A., & Kaur, S. (2019). Evolution of Internet of Things (IoT) and its significant
impact in the field of precision agriculture. Computers and Electronics in Agriculture,
157, 218–231. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compag.2018.12.039
Khattak, H. A., Shah, M. A., Khan, S., Ali, I., & Imran, M. (2019). Perception layer security
in internet of things. Future Generation Computer Systems, 100, 144–164. https://doi.org/
10.1016/j.future.2019.04.038
Kumar, S. A., Vealey, T., & Srivastava, H. (2016, January). Security in internet of things:
Challenges, solutions and future directions. In 49th Hawaii International Conference on
System Sciences (HICSS) (pp. 5772–5781). IEEE. https://doi.org/10.1109/HICSS.2016.714
Masoodi, F., Alam, S., & Siddiqui, S. T. (2019). Security & privacy threats, attacks and
countermeasures in Internet of Things. International Journal of Network Security & Its
Applications, 11(02), 67–77. https://doi.org/10.5121/ijnsa.2019.11205
Nadeem, A., & Howarth, M. P. (2018). A survey of MANET intrusion detection & preven-
tion approaches for network layer attacks. IEEE Communications Surveys & Tutorials,
15(4), 2027–2045.
Obaidat, M. A., Obeidat, S., Holst, J., Al Hayajneh, A., & Brown, J. (2020). A comprehen-
sive and systematic survey on the internet of things: security and privacy challenges,
security frameworks, enabling technologies, threats, vulnerabilities and countermeasures.
Computers, 9(2), 44. https://doi.org/10.3390/computers9020044
Ogonji, M. M., Okeyo, G., & Wafula, J. M. (2020). A survey on privacy and security of
internet of things. Computer Science Review, 38, 100312. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cosrev.
2020.100312
Panchal, A. C., Khadse, V. M., & Mahalle, P. N. (2018). Security issues in IIoT: A compre-
hensive survey of attacks on IoT and its countermeasures. In 2018 IEEE Global
Conference on Wireless Computing and Networking (GCWCN) (pp. 124–130). IEEE.
Park, S., Al-Shurman, M., & Yoo, S.-M. (2018, April). Black hole attack in mobile ad hoc
network. In ACMSE’04, Huntsville, AL, USA.
Prabu, M., Rani, S., Kumar, R., & Venkatesh, P. (2015). dos attacks and defenses at the
Network layer in ad-hoc and sensor wireless networks, wireless ad-hoc sensor networks:
a short survey. European Journal of Applied Science, 7(2), 80–85.
Rahimi, H., Zibaeenejad, A., Rajabzadeh, P., & Safavi, A. A. (2018, September). On the
security of the 5g-IOT architecture. In Proceedings of the International Conference on
Smart Cities and Internet of Things (pp. 1–8). https://doi.org/10.1145/3269961.3269968
Robles, R. J., & Endencio-Robles, D. (2019). State of internet of things (IOT) security
attacks, vulnerabilities and solutions. Computer Reviews Journal, 3, 255–263.
Roohi, A., Adeel, M., & Shah, M. A. (2019, September). DDoS in IOT: A roadmap towards
security & countermeasures. In 2019 25th International Conference on Automation and
Computing (ICAC) (pp. 1–6). IEEE. https://doi.org/10.23919/IConAC.2019.8895034
JOURNAL OF APPLIED SECURITY RESEARCH 17
Ross, K., Moh, M., Moh, T. S., & Yao, J. (2018, March). Multi-source data analysis and
evaluation of machine learning techniques for SQL injection detection. In Proceedings of
the ACMSE 2018 Conference (pp. 1–8). https://doi.org/10.1145/3190645.3190670
Sarma, R., & Barbhuiya, F. A. (2019, June). Internet of Things: Attacks and defences. In
2019 7th International Conference on Smart Computing & Communications (ICSCC) (pp.
1–5). IEEE. https://doi.org/10.1109/ICSCC.2019.8843649
Shruthi, N., & Vinay, C. K. (2016). Network layer attack: Analysis & solutions a survey.
IOSR Journal of Computer Engineering, 18(2), 67–80.
Su, K., Wang, W., & Chang, W. (2009). Detecting Sybil attacks in wireless sensor networks
using neighboring information. Computer Networks, 53(18), 3042–3056. https://doi.org/
10.1016/j.comnet.2009.07.013
Tuan, T. A., Long, H. V., Son, L. H., Kumar, R., Priyadarshini, I., & Son, N. T. K. (2020).
Performance evaluation of Botnet DDoS attack detection using machine learning.
Evolutionary Intelligence, 13(2), 283–294. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12065-019-00310-w
Vishwakarma, R., & Jain, A. K. (2020). A survey of DDoS attacking techniques and defence
mechanisms in the IOT network. Telecommunication Systems, 73(1), 3–25. https://doi.
org/10.1007/s11235-019-00599-z
Wang, S., Zhu, S., & Zhang, Y. (2018, June). Blockchain-based mutual authentication secur-
ity protocol for distributed RFID systems. In 2018 IEEE Symposium on Computers and
Communications (ISCC) (pp. 00074–00077). IEEE. https://doi.org/10.1109/ISCC.2018.
8538567
Zhao, W., Yang, S., & Luo, X. (2020, August). On threat analysis of IOT-based systems: A
survey. In 2020 IEEE International Conference on Smart Internet of Things (smartIOT)
(pp. 205–212). IEEE. https://doi.org/10.1109/SmartIoT49966.2020.00038