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Compact Object Security for the Internet of Things

Brorsson, Joakim LU and Gunnarsson, Martin (2016) EITM01 20161
Department of Electrical and Information Technology
Abstract
The Internet of Things is coming. With it comes security challenges not present on common, more capable, devices such as desktop computers or servers. We argue that traditional channel security needs to be complemented with object security to cope with the constrained nature of small devices and Low Power Lossy Networks. The main reason for a partial transition to object security being heavy use of asynchronous communication. This thesis explores the feasibility of OSCoAP, a novel draft for an object security solution for CoAP, on constrained devices. It also evaluates the performance of OSCoAP compared to the well known channel security standard DTLS.
Popular Abstract
The Internet of Things (IoT) is coming. With it comes new security challenges from the constrained nature of IoT devices. As a response to the need for efficient security, Ericsson and SICS are collaboratively developing a new protocol, OSCoAP.

Security challenges in IoT
IoT devices often operate on battery power and have restricted computing power. Therefore traditional approaches to communications security, such as the channel security protocol DTLS, can be a bad fit for some applications of IoT.

These protocols encrypt everything that is sent over them. If DTLS communication is carried over intermediate proxies, even proxying information will be encrypted. Therefore, decryption capabilities are often given to the proxy. This is... (More)
The Internet of Things (IoT) is coming. With it comes new security challenges from the constrained nature of IoT devices. As a response to the need for efficient security, Ericsson and SICS are collaboratively developing a new protocol, OSCoAP.

Security challenges in IoT
IoT devices often operate on battery power and have restricted computing power. Therefore traditional approaches to communications security, such as the channel security protocol DTLS, can be a bad fit for some applications of IoT.

These protocols encrypt everything that is sent over them. If DTLS communication is carried over intermediate proxies, even proxying information will be encrypted. Therefore, decryption capabilities are often given to the proxy. This is called hop-by-hop security and is undesired compared to end-to-end security where an intermediate can not access data.

In channel security protocols, end-to-end security in combination with proxying functionality is unobtainable. A new solution is needed in order to provide end-to-end security through proxies.

Object Security in IoT
Contrary to channel security protocols, object security protocols, such as the novel OSCoAP proposal, can provide selective encryption. This means that OSCoAP encrypts confidential parts of a message using keys unavailable to the proxy, while metadata intended for the proxy is sent in plain text. This way of achieving confidentiality minimises the need to trust a proxy, since the proxy can not read confidential data.
The purpose of OSCoAP is to provide end-to-end security through proxies for IoT devices. To test the feasibility and efficiency of the OSCoAP protocol proposal, this project has implemented a proof of concept. The goal was to test if OSCoAP was implementable and had acceptable performance compared to DTLS.

Results
A number of metrics, e.g. processing-time, memory footprint and network overhead, has been identified as important for IoT devices. In our measurements, OSCoAP proved slightly more network efficient than DTLS. Further, OSCoAP has a longer processing time and a slightly higher memory footprint than DTLS, but the performance is still acceptable. However, the implementation is not yet fully optimised.

Conclusion
OSCoAP shows great promise. It is able to obtain end-to-end security through proxies with acceptable performance. If the protocol becomes a standard, end-to-end security will be available in more scenarios than today. An object security solution designed for IoT is needed, and OSCoAP might just be it. (Less)
Please use this url to cite or link to this publication:
author
Brorsson, Joakim LU and Gunnarsson, Martin
supervisor
organization
course
EITM01 20161
year
type
H2 - Master's Degree (Two Years)
subject
keywords
Internet of Things, Object Security, Constrained Devices, CoAP, OSCoAP
report number
LU/LTH-EIT 2016-532
language
English
id
8887542
date added to LUP
2016-08-09 09:02:12
date last changed
2016-08-09 09:02:12
@misc{8887542,
  abstract     = {{The Internet of Things is coming. With it comes security challenges not present on common, more capable, devices such as desktop computers or servers. We argue that traditional channel security needs to be complemented with object security to cope with the constrained nature of small devices and Low Power Lossy Networks. The main reason for a partial transition to object security being heavy use of asynchronous communication. This thesis explores the feasibility of OSCoAP, a novel draft for an object security solution for CoAP, on constrained devices. It also evaluates the performance of OSCoAP compared to the well known channel security standard DTLS.}},
  author       = {{Brorsson, Joakim and Gunnarsson, Martin}},
  language     = {{eng}},
  note         = {{Student Paper}},
  title        = {{Compact Object Security for the Internet of Things}},
  year         = {{2016}},
}