A Novel MQTT 5.0-Based Over-the-Air Updating Architecture Facilitating Stronger Security

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The authors proposed an MQTT-based model for securing the OTA update. The manuscript is well-organized, but the following issues are needed to address:

- Proofreading is necessary for refining sentence structures, grammar mistakes, and typos.

- Many improper grammar terms are found, like incorrect nouns: e.g., “our designs”, “a new frameworks”, and so on.

- What are the titles of columns in tables? Especially, Table – 2 have to be revised after double-checking the contents on it.

- In the abstract, it is mentioned that it incurs lots of security concerns if the broker is not fully trusted. Why is it not fully trusted? It would be better if you express the major concern.

- In section 1, you have already explained the brief of MQTT, but it is also described in section 2 again. It should be described in more detail on the security concerns in the MQTT protocol in section 1. What are the gaps in the related research on it? 

- In section 2, you describe the research works of MQTT, version 3.1. How about the research works on the previous versions? Your model will focus on version 5.0, but the two works are related to it. How about the others? In your description, it is inspired by Chien’s work. What is the gap of that? How to overcome the challenges?

- More reference works are needed in your manuscript to express more detail about the challenges and issues in both the MQTT versions and previous research works.

- Section 5 are needed to improve. How to analyze/test your model? How to compare the performance of your work with others?

- In the conclusion, you mentioned that your model outperforms the existent models in terms of security and privacy, but there are no significant comparisons about that matter, even if the evaluation is included in section 5.

Author Response

Please see the attachment

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

- Discuss in detail about the key contributions of this article.

- The related works section ends abruptly. It can be summarized in the form of a table.

- Some of the recent works such as the following can be discussed

Security in next generation mobile payment systems: A comprehensive survey.

- A detailed analysis on the simulation results that includes the inferences of the authors can be presented.

- The results section can be enhanced by adding an analysis on the computational complexity of the proposed approach.

- What are the threats to validity of the proposed approach?

- Discuss about the future enhancements of this study.

Author Response

Please see the attachment

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Thanks for submitting a well-revised manuscript which is based on comments on the previous version. 

It would be better if some refinements are included in the next version.

- Please make sure the keywords, are included in your manuscript. The terms that are in the keywords section, should be more technically related to your work.

- The format of Tables should be revised. In Table 1, the referenced works like “[24]” can be written as “H. Y. Chien et al. [24]”. In the comparison, it would be better if the referenced works are from the journal publication/conference proceeding, not from the web. The term “Ours” in Table 3, is better than “This paper” in Table 1. 

- Final proofread for the format of the tables, the quality of figures, and the referenced works.

Author Response

Reviewer 1's comments:
All the comments are addressed.

Reviewer 2's comments:
Comment 1:

- Please make sure the keywords, are included in your manuscript. The terms that are in the keywords section, should be more technically
related to your work.
Response1: Thanks. We add the following terms, “mobile payment, End-to-End security, enhanced authentication”, in the keywords.

Comment 2:

- The format of Tables should be revised. In Table 1, the referenced works like “[24]” can be written as “H. Y. Chien et al. [24]”. In the comparison, it would be better if the referenced works are from the journal publication/conference proceeding, not from the web. The term “Ours” in Table 3, is better than “This paper” in Table 1.

- Final proofread for the format of the tables, the quality of figures, and the referenced works.
R2: Thanks. We revise it accordingly.

Reviewer 2 Report

All the comments are addressed.

Author Response

Thanks.