Eavesdropping Attacks in IoT
Internet has become home to clusters of services and applications that are used by the customers at a large scale. One of the latest developments and contribution of the technologies in association with the Internet is Internet of Things (IoT). Things in IoT refer to several components such as human resources, machines, concepts, and technologies etc. that collaborate and connect with each other to give rise to an application. This application is made up of the gadgets that work together to achieve a common goal. Many home and office utilities have already been set up with the application of IoT (Bhabad, 2015). There are several advantages that are provided to the users with the development of IoT applications.
- What are the possible threats to security that can occur in association with the IoT application?
- What are the possible consequences and outcomes of these attacks on IoT security and privacy?
- What is the list of the protection mechanisms and prevention and detection measures that can be adapted to deal with the security risks and attacks?
- Does physical control and physical security has any relation to the security of an IoT application?
- Eavesdropping
Eavesdropping is one of the prime threats to security that has been observed in association with IoT applications. The attackers make use of the entry and access points that are available to cause damage to the security architecture and get hold of the activities that take place (Wood, 2016).
- Unauthorized Tracking
Another form of eavesdropping attack is unauthorized monitoring and tracking that is often executed in the IoT applications. Tracking is done by the attackers to understand the patterns that are involved in information exchange. Also, the types of activities performed by specific types of users are also tracked.
- Data Mining Attacks
There are several data mining attacks that take place in IoT application by the execution of several attacks that are associated with the concept of Business Intelligence (BI) (Amato, 2016).
- Reconstruction Attacks
Information confidentiality is also impacted by changing the entire structure of the information and the data packets that travel across in an IoT application. These data packets often suffer from alterations or changes in the contents or the entire structure of the data set.
- Message Alteration
Alteration is one of the attacks that occur on the integrity of the information. Integrity is one of the components of the CIA triad that is associated with information and data that suggests that confidentiality, integrity and availability are the three essential properties of information that must be protected at all times. In case of the attacks on the message integrity, the contents and the structure is altered through malevolent practices to impact the integrity of these messges (Microsoft, 2016).
- Media Alteration
Alteration is one of the attacks that occur on the integrity of the information. Integrity is one of the components of the CIA triad that is associated with information and data that suggests that confidentiality, integrity and availability are the three essential properties of information that must be protected at all times. In case of the attacks on the media integrity, the contents and the structure is altered through malevolent practices to impact the integrity of these media contents (Aws, 2016).
- Flooding Attacks
Data Mining Attacks in IoT
There are primarily two forms of flooding attacks that include Denial of Service (DoS) and Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks. These attacks are termed as flooding attacks because of the nature of their execution that involves the flooding of unnecessary and dummy data on the network channels that lead to devastation of the availability of the application (Nichols, 2016).
- QoS Abuse
It is demanded and expected by the users and customers of the IoT applications that they have the utmost quality offered and maintained in the services that are offered to them. However, the expectations of the customers are not met when the attackers succeed in the execution of the attacks that has an adverse impact on the quality of the application (Panetta, 2016).
The issues that are related with IoT applications and services were also discussed with two of the peers to obtain their viewpoints. Peer one is thirty three years of age and is a male. Peer two is twenty seven years of age and is a female.
The peers highlighted the issues that are related with the devices on which the IoT applications are run by the users. There are devices such as laptops and other mobile devices which are used by the users to monitor and execute the services related to an IoT application. Stealing and loss of these devices puts a lot of risk to the user as the information gets exposed to the unauthorized people.
The discussion on the topic allowed the development of understanding on the issues that are involved and the outcomes that may come out from them.
- Users make use of IoT applications for several purposes such as automation of their offices and homes, automobile monitoring, smart parking etc. In case of an attack, the entire functioning gets impacted as availability is destroyed.
- The providers of these applications suffer from legal obligations and associated risks (Mahmoud, 2015).
- There are also impacts that result out from these risks that bring down the performance of the organization in the market. Also, the goodwill is impacted.
- Profits that are earned by the organizations also deviate from the estimated values since the customer engagement is brought down (Ko & Dorantes, 2016).
The lessons that were learnt and acquired with the medium of the research that was conducted on the security and privacy issues of IoT included the understanding of the security architecture along with the deviations that may occur. It was acquired that it is necessary to make sure that security of these applications is maintained.
- A check on the possible risks and attacks that may take place shall be performed by executing the risk assessment and analysis activities. It shall also be made sure that there are treatment strategies decided for every risk that is identified.
- The organizations and application providers must use automation to the fullest and shall reflect it in the anti-threat tools such as anti-malware and anti-denial tools.
- Authentication shall be improved by using multiple layer authentications (Lu, 2014).
- Networks are required to be kept protected and therefore monitoring, auditing and reviews shall be carried out on these networks.
- Information shall be encrypted with the use of encryption algorithms such as Triple-DES and RSA algorithms for data encryption.
- Intrusion detection shall also be enabled in the application with the use of automated packages as Intrusion detection systems. Similar is the case with the intrusion prevention.
- Device security shall be upgraded with the use and installation of monitoring tools in the devices.
- Legal framework shall be improved to make sure that the overall legal architecture is upgraded.
Physical security and physical controls are considered as the measures that are often paid lesser attention. It is believed that automation is the key and everything can be controlled by the application of automation. However, it is not true and absence of physical controls allows the attackers to enter the system and cause damage to the application (Jing, 2014).
Conclusion
IoT is something that has grown and expanded over the years. Things in IoT refer to several components such as human resources, machines, concepts, and technologies etc. that collaborate and connect with each other to give rise to an application. This application is made up of the gadgets that work together to achieve a common goal. There are many risks that are associated with the IoT applications. It is necessary to carry out a check on the possible risks and attacks that may take place shall be performed by executing the risk assessment and analysis activities. It shall also be made sure that there are treatment strategies decided for every risk that is identified. It is also necessary to make sure that the risks related with the devices and the networks are avoided by enhancing the respective security of each channel. It is believed that automation is the key and everything can be controlled by the application of automation. However, it is not true and absence of physical controls allows the attackers to enter the system and cause damage to the application.
References
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