Community-Based Security for the Internet of Things
This addresses security vulnerabilities in IoT devices for users and manufacturers, but it appears incremental as it builds on existing community and cryptographic concepts.
The paper tackles the security challenges in IoT devices with limited computational power by proposing a community-based security mechanism where devices mutually assist each other in secure software management, using game-theoretic methods for community formation and light-weight cryptographic means for authentic software deployment.
With more and more devices becoming connectable to the internet, the number of services but also a lot of threats increases dramatically. Security is often a secondary matter behind functionality and comfort, but the problem has already been recognized. Still, with many IoT devices being deployed already, security will come step-by-step and through updates, patches and new versions of apps and IoT software. While these updates can be safely retrieved from app stores, the problems kick in via jailbroken devices and with the variety of untrusted sources arising on the internet. Since hacking is typically a community effort? these days, security could be a community goal too. The challenges are manifold, and one reason for weak or absent security on IoT devices is their weak computational power. In this chapter, we discuss a community based security mechanism in which devices mutually aid each other in secure software management. We discuss game-theoretic methods of community formation and light-weight cryptographic means to accomplish authentic software deployment inside the IoT device community.