IoT for Defense and National Security

12Vulnerabilities in IoT Systems

Zheng Fang and Prasant Mohapatra

Department of Computer Science, University of California, Davis, CA, USA

IoT systems are finding increasing use in tactical systems where they help in applications related to sensing and actuation to aid various control systems. Since the IoT systems are built using several devices and components, ensuring device or component‐level security is not adequate. Integration of these devices to build a system introduces a broad range of vulnerabilities that are very critical for tactical applications. In this Chapter, we provide a detailed view of these vulnerabilities in IoT systems that are deployed in tactical applications.

12.1 Introduction

Internet of Things (IoT) is one of the most booming trends in recent years. We are seeing an increasing number of smart home platforms, such as Samsung SmartThings [1], Google Home [2], Philips Hue [3], and so on. IoT systems have also being applied to many other scenarios, such as healthcare [4, 5], industrial manufacturing [6, 7], and battlefield [8, 9], etc. It is predicted that IoT market size will reach $1.6 trillion by 2025 [10]. The number of IoT devices connected to the internet is projected to be 30.9 billion by 2025 [11].

However, numerous vulnerabilities have been reported in IoT systems, threatening system security and even users' safety. This is largely due to the fact that most of the IoT manufacturers focus on functionality to gain market share and tend to ignore ...