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RFID and NFC in Secure IoT Scenarios and Applications

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A special issue of Sensors (ISSN 1424-8220). This special issue belongs to the section "Internet of Things".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (31 October 2020) | Viewed by 57229

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Special Issue Editors

Dr. Carlos Dafonte

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Guest Editor

CITIC - Department of Computer Science, University of A Coruña (Spain)
Interests: Datamining; traceability; security; intelligent monitoring; computational astrophysics

Dr. Ana Fernández-Vilas

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor

I&C Lab. AtlanTTic Research Centre, University of Vigo, 36310 Vigo, Spain
Interests: datamining; machine learning; security; social media; personalisation

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Short-range wireless communications are considered one of the pillars of the Internet of Things (IoT). Among the different technologies considered as short range, near field communication (NFC) and radio-frequency identification (RFID), both active and passive, are widely accepted as the most extended techniques for the realization of IoT applications by the end user. Together, they are complementing each other to provide connectivity. RFID is commonly used to automatize inventory in the retail sector whereas NFC can provide this information to ease purchasing processes.

However, NFC, RFID and, in general, the irruption of IoT, create unique requirements in security different to the ones considered when people, computers, servers, and more recently smartphones were the only inhabitants of the Internet. Firstly, as a myriad of sensors provide information which will end up taking a decision to act or not, we need reliable data, regardless of the sector: home, health, business, etc. Secondly, the extreme variety in terms of resources in IoT devices imposes particular restrictions on the implementation of security methods or even on the delegation of these methods in other devices. Thirdly, IoT is much more an ecosystem than any other distribution infrastructure in the past and, moreover, it is extremely dynamic and decoupled. Considering this perspective, assumptions in traditional security methods can fail. Fourthly, the massive number of IoT devices impede a centralized management of security in the style of a traditional information security management system (ISMS), and collaborative security management should be pursued.

On the application side, it is clear that the integration of IoT solutions with authentication allows us to have a unique identifier that can be used to discover and analyse inefficiencies with the help of big data technologies. It also facilitates the monitoring, security, and traceability in (but not limited to) manufacturing, transport, water and power services, supply and warehousing, or safety in medical and IT infrastructures environments. The application side of security also has a place in this issue.

Another important perspective of the IoT technology covered in this issue is the open source hardware and software implementing low-cost application sensors where a commercial solution does not exist, the commercial solution is expensive, or not flexible enough to apply to the problem.

Although no IoT technology is excluded, this Special Issue is specially oriented toward the security challenges of scenarios and applications which make an extensive use of RFID, NFC, and beacons. One of the objectives of this Special Issue is to provide a vision of the current situation of proximity solutions. The adoption rate and capabilities are different but, in many cases, a mix of technologies will be the best option.

- Risk assessment in IoT

- Information Security management in IoT

- Trusted Identities

- Trusted data

- Trusted infrastructure

- Privacy and confidentiality

- Product traceability and safety

- Forensic data analytics in IoT devices

- Early intrusion detection

- Safety-based IoT devices

- Monitoring of infrastructures

- Open source/low-cost hardware and applications

Prof. Carlos Dafonte
Prof. Ana Fernández-Vilas
Guest Editors

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Keywords

RFID
NFC
beacons
Internet of Things
safety and security
traceability
privacy
monitoring

Published Papers (7 papers)

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Research

18 pages, 853 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Quarantining Malicious IoT Devices in Intelligent Sliced Mobile Networks

by David Candal-Ventureira, Pablo Fondo-Ferreiro, Felipe Gil-Castiñeira and Francisco Javier González-Castaño

Sensors 2020, 20(18), 5054; https://doi.org/10.3390/s20185054 - 5 Sep 2020

Cited by 6 | Viewed by 3425

Abstract

The unstoppable adoption of the Internet of Things (IoT) is driven by the deployment of new services that require continuous capture of information from huge populations of sensors, or actuating over a myriad of “smart” objects. Accordingly, next generation networks are being designed to support such massive numbers of devices and connections. For example, the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) is designing the different 5G releases specifically with IoT in mind. Nevertheless, from a security perspective this scenario is a potential nightmare: the attack surface becomes wider and many IoT nodes do not have enough resources to support advanced security protocols. In fact, security is rarely a priority in their design. Thus, including network-level mechanisms for preventing attacks from malware-infected IoT devices is mandatory to avert further damage. In this paper, we propose a novel Software-Defined Networking (SDN)-based architecture to identify suspicious nodes in 4G or 5G networks and redirect their traffic to a secondary network slice where traffic is analyzed in depth before allowing it reaching its destination. The architecture can be easily integrated in any existing deployment due to its interoperability. By following this approach, we can detect potential threats at an early stage and limit the damage by Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks originated in IoT devices. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue RFID and NFC in Secure IoT Scenarios and Applications)

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19 pages, 941 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Security Aspects in Smart Meters: Analysis and Prevention

by Rebeca P. Díaz Redondo, Ana Fernández-Vilas and Gabriel Fernández dos Reis

Sensors 2020, 20(14), 3977; https://doi.org/10.3390/s20143977 - 17 Jul 2020

Cited by 16 | Viewed by 3346

Abstract

Smart meters are of the basic elements in the so-called Smart Grid. These devices, connected to the Internet, keep bidirectional communication with other devices in the Smart Grid structure to allow remote readings and maintenance. As any other device connected to a network, smart meters become vulnerable to attacks with different purposes, like stealing data or altering readings. Nowadays, it is becoming more and more popular to buy and plug-and-play smart meters, additionally to those installed by the energy providers, to directly monitor the energy consumption at home. This option inherently entails security risks that are under the responsibility of householders. In this paper, we focus on an open solution based on Smartpi 2.0 devices with two purposes. On the one hand, we propose a network configuration and different data flows to exchange data (energy readings) in the home. These flows are designed to support collaborative among the devices in order to prevent external attacks and attempts of corrupting the data. On the other hand, we check the vulnerability by performing two kind of attacks (denial of service and stealing and changing data by using a malware). We conclude that, as expected, these devices are vulnerable to these attacks, but we provide mechanisms to detect both of them and to solve, by applying cooperation techniques. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue RFID and NFC in Secure IoT Scenarios and Applications)

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23 pages, 1009 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Annotated Dataset for Anomaly Detection in a Data Center with IoT Sensors

by Laura Vigoya, Diego Fernandez, Victor Carneiro and Fidel Cacheda

Sensors 2020, 20(13), 3745; https://doi.org/10.3390/s20133745 - 4 Jul 2020

Cited by 10 | Viewed by 5227

Abstract

The relative simplicity of IoT networks extends service vulnerabilities and possibilities to different network failures exhibiting system weaknesses. Therefore, having a dataset with a sufficient number of samples, labeled and with a systematic analysis, is essential in order to understand how these networks behave and detect traffic anomalies. This work presents DAD: a complete and labeled IoT dataset containing a reproduction of certain real-world behaviors as seen from the network. To approximate the dataset to a real environment, the data were obtained from a physical data center, with temperature sensors based on NFC smart passive sensor technology. Having carried out different approaches, performing mathematical modeling using time series was finally chosen. The virtual infrastructure necessary for the creation of the dataset is formed by five virtual machines, a MQTT broker and four client nodes, each of them with four sensors of the refrigeration units connected to the internal IoT network. DAD presents a seven day network activity with three types of anomalies: duplication, interception and modification on the MQTT message, spread over 5 days. Finally, a feature description is performed, so it can be used for the application of the various techniques of prediction or automatic classification. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue RFID and NFC in Secure IoT Scenarios and Applications)

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12 pages, 1297 KiB

Open AccessArticle

SKINNY-Based RFID Lightweight Authentication Protocol

by Liang Xiao, He Xu, Feng Zhu, Ruchuan Wang and Peng Li

Sensors 2020, 20(5), 1366; https://doi.org/10.3390/s20051366 - 2 Mar 2020

Cited by 15 | Viewed by 3049

Abstract

With the rapid development of the Internet of Things and the popularization of 5G communication technology, the security of resource-constrained IoT devices such as Radio Frequency Identification (RFID)-based applications have received extensive attention. In traditional RFID systems, the communication channel between the tag and the reader is vulnerable to various threats, including denial of service, spoofing, and desynchronization. Thus, the confidentiality and integrity of the transmitted data cannot be guaranteed. In order to solve these security problems, in this paper, we propose a new RFID authentication protocol based on a lightweight block cipher algorithm, SKINNY, (short for LRSAS). Security analysis shows that the LRSAS protocol guarantees mutual authentication and is resistant to various attacks, such as desynchronization attacks, replay attacks, and tracing attacks. Performance evaluations show that the proposed solution is suitable for low-cost tags while meeting security requirements. This protocol reaches a balance between security requirements and costs. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue RFID and NFC in Secure IoT Scenarios and Applications)

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18 pages, 3869 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Developing a Secure Low-Cost Radon Monitoring System

by Alberto Alvarellos, Marcos Gestal, Julián Dorado and Juan Ramón Rabuñal

Sensors 2020, 20(3), 752; https://doi.org/10.3390/s20030752 - 29 Jan 2020

Cited by 18 | Viewed by 6298

Abstract

Radon gas has been declared a human carcinogen by the United States Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA) and the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC). Several studies carried out in Spain highlighted the high radon concentrations in several regions, with Galicia (northwestern Spain) being one of the regions with the highest radon concentrations. The objective of this work was to create a safe and low-cost radon monitoring and alert system, based on open source technologies. To achieve this objective, the system uses devices, a collection of sensors with a processing unit and a communication module, and a backend, responsible for managing all the information, predicting radon levels and issuing alerts using open source technologies. Security is one of the largest challenges for the internet of things, and it is utterly important in the current scenario, given that high radon concentrations pose a health risk. For this reason, this work focuses on securing the entire end-to-end communication path to avoid data forging. The results of this work indicate that the development of a low-cost, yet secured, radon monitoring system is feasible, allowing one to create a network of sensors that can help mitigate the health hazards that high radon concentrations pose. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue RFID and NFC in Secure IoT Scenarios and Applications)

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12 pages, 671 KiB

Open AccessArticle

UHF RFID Prototyping Platform for ISO 29167 Decryption Based on an SDR

by Georg Saxl, Manuel Ferdik, Moritz Fischer, Martin Maderboeck and Thomas Ussmueller

Sensors 2019, 19(10), 2220; https://doi.org/10.3390/s19102220 - 14 May 2019

Cited by 4 | Viewed by 3262

Abstract

Ultra high frequency radio frequency identification (UHF RFID) is becoming a key technology in the Internet of Things. It allows the implementation of batteryless and wireless nodes, including sensors and actuators. Due to its possible transmission range of >10 m and potential to carry critical information, security is a highly important topic. For this reason, the International Organization for Standardization has published several crypto suites for UHF RFID within the ISO-29167 standard in 2014. Recently, research has focused on implementing those encryption features on the transponder side. However, currently no crypto enabled UHF RFID readers are available. In order to cope with the rapid development in this field, ‘open’ and flexible readers based on software defined radios are needed. They make it possible to quickly adapt the protocol and to test new functionalities such as encryption. This paper deals with the first implementation of the ISO 29167-19 standardized RAMON decryption on a software defined radio. The programming of this hardware is done in LabVIEW which allows for controlling the built-in transceiver modules. However, first measurements show that the decryption takes 51 s. This is because LabVIEW is not suitable for handling very large numbers like they are utilized in cryptography. Because such a long processing time is not feasible in experiments nor in a real-life scenarios, this method is not suitable for a prototyping platform. Thus, a different approach is chosen to optimize the decryption processing time. LabVIEW still provides the framework for handling the protocol and controlling the transceivers, but the decryption is performed in a Java application. In that way, the entire decryption process takes only about 2.2 ms, which is 23,318 times faster than the implementation in LabVIEW. Thus, this new approach meets the necessary timing requirements and is suitable for realistic application scenarios. The shown method allows development and testing of new functionalities in UHF RFID systems but may also be employed in any application that require long processing times in LabVIEW. Furthermore, the implementation of decryption features is the first necessary step towards a fully compliant, crypto enabled interrogator for UHF RFID, featuring a high adaptability. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue RFID and NFC in Secure IoT Scenarios and Applications)

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43 pages, 871 KiB

Open AccessArticle

A Survey of Internet of Things (IoT) Authentication Schemes

by Mohammed El-hajj, Ahmad Fadlallah, Maroun Chamoun and Ahmed Serhrouchni

Sensors 2019, 19(5), 1141; https://doi.org/10.3390/s19051141 - 6 Mar 2019

Cited by 297 | Viewed by 22257

Abstract

The Internet of Things (IoT) is the ability to provide everyday devices with a way of identification and another way for communication with each other. The spectrum of IoT application domains is very large including smart homes, smart cities, wearables, e-health, etc. Consequently, tens and even hundreds of billions of devices will be connected. Such devices will have smart capabilities to collect, analyze and even make decisions without any human interaction. Security is a supreme requirement in such circumstances, and in particular authentication is of high interest given the damage that could happen from a malicious unauthenticated device in an IoT system. This paper gives a near complete and up-to-date view of the IoT authentication field. It provides a summary of a large range of authentication protocols proposed in the literature. Using a multi-criteria classification previously introduced in our work, it compares and evaluates the proposed authentication protocols, showing their strengths and weaknesses, which constitutes a fundamental first step for researchers and developers addressing this domain. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue RFID and NFC in Secure IoT Scenarios and Applications)

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