Internet of Things : Exploring and Securing a Future Concept

Abstract: Internet of Things (IoT) is a concept that encompasses various objects and methods of communication to exchange information. Today IoT is more a descriptive term of a vision that everything should be connected to the internet. IoT will be fundamental in the future because the concept opens up opportunities for new services and new innovations. All objects will be connected and able to communicate with each other, while they operate in unprotected environments. This later aspect leads to major security challenges. Today, IoT is in great need of standardization and clear architectures that describe how this technology should be implemented and how IoT devices interact with each other in a secure manner. The security challenges are rooted in the technology and how information is acquired and manipulated by this technology. This thesis provides an introduction to what the IoT is and how it can be used as well as some of the threats that IoT may face in regards to information security. In addition, the thesis provides the reader with some suggestions about how to potentially solve the fundamental need for authentication and secure communications. The solutions presented are based on both contemporary solutions and technologies that are under development for the future. Contemporary solutions are based on security protocols such as IPSec and DTLS. These protocols are being used in an environment that extends across the Internet and into a 6LoWPAN network. The proposed authentication solution has been developed based on a public key infrastructure and trust models for certificate management. As future work, the thesis presents several research areas where this thesis can be used as a basis. These specialization areas include further analysis of vulnerabilities and an implementation of the proposed solutions.