No place else has this been more true than in wireless security, where it took the better part of two decades to get us to where we are today.\u00a0 \u201cWireless\u201d can mean many different things.\u00a0 It could mean 3G cellular service or Wifi or Bluetooth or something else.\u00a0 In the context of Wifi, we have standards such as WPA Personal and WPA Enterprise that were developed at the IEEE.\u00a0 Similarly, 3GPP has developed secure access standards for your phone through the use of a SIM card.\u00a0 With either WPA Enterprise or 3G, you can bet that if your device starts to misbehave, it can be uniquely identified.<\/p>\n
Unfortunately that\u2019s not so much the case with other wireless standards, and in particular for IEEE’s 802.15.4, where security has for the time being been largely left to higher layers.\u00a0 And that’s just fine if what we\u2019re talking about is your Bluetooth keyboard.\u00a0 But it\u2019s not fine at all<\/strong><\/span> if we\u2019re talking large number of devices, where one of them is misbehaving.<\/p>\n Here we have a lighting network.\u00a0 It might consist of many different light bulbs.\u00a0 Maybe hundreds.\u00a0 Now imagine a bad guy breaking into one of those devices and attacking the others.\u00a0 Spot the bad guy.\u00a0 In a wired world, assuming you have access to the switch, you can spot the device simply by looking at which port a connection came into.\u00a0 But this is wireless, and mesh wireless at that.\u00a0 In the case where each device has its own unique key, you can trace per session per device.\u00a0 But if all devices use a shared key, you need to find other means.\u00a0 A well hacked device isn\u2019t going to give you many clues; it\u2019s going to try to mimic a device that isn\u2019t<\/strong> hacked, perhaps one that isn\u2019t turned on or one that doesn\u2019t even exist.<\/p>\n These attacks can be varied in nature.\u00a0 If the mesh is connected to other networks, like enterprise networks, then attacks can be aimed at resources on those networks.\u00a0 This might range from a form of a so-called \u201cSnow Shoe\u201d attack, where no one device generates a lot of traffic but the aggregate of hacked devices overwhelm a target, to something more destructive, like attempts to reconfigure critical infrastructure.<\/p>\n Some attacks aren\u2019t even intended as such, as Raul Rojas discovered in 2009<\/a>, when a single light bulb took down his IoT-enabled house.<\/p>\n The most obvious thing to do is not to get into this situation in the first place.\u00a0 From a traceability standpoint, network managers need to be able to identify the source of attacks.\u00a0 Having unique wireless sessions between leaf and non-leaf nodes that are bound to source addresses is ideal.\u00a0 Alternatively, all communications in a mesh could tunnel to non-leaf nodes that have strong diagnostic capabilities, like IPFIX and port spanning.\u00a0 At that point administrators can at least log traffic to determine the source of attacks.\u00a0 That\u2019s a tall order for a light bulb, but it\u2019s why companies like Cisco exist- to protect your infrastructure.<\/p>\n If none of these alternatives exist, poor network administrators (who might just be home owners like Mr. Rojas)\u00a0 are forced into a position where they might need to consider the entire mesh a single misbehaving device, and disconnect it from the network.\u00a0 And even that might not do the job: a smart piece of malware might notice and quiet itself until it can determine that the mesh has been re-connected.<\/p>\n Some careful thought is required as these capabilities develop.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Security experts have two common laments: Security is an afterthought, and Security is hard to get right. No place else has this been more true than in wireless security, where it took the better part of two decades to get us to where we are today.\u00a0 \u201cWireless\u201d can mean many different things.\u00a0 It could mean … Continue reading “Looming wireless problems with IoT security”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":172,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[87,9,1],"tags":[511,527,526],"class_list":["post-1986","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-internet","category-security","category-uncategorized","tag-iot","tag-mesh-networking","tag-wireless"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ofcourseimright.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1986","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ofcourseimright.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ofcourseimright.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ofcourseimright.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/172"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ofcourseimright.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1986"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/ofcourseimright.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1986\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1996,"href":"https:\/\/ofcourseimright.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1986\/revisions\/1996"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ofcourseimright.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1986"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ofcourseimright.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1986"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ofcourseimright.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1986"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"mesh-insecurity\"](\"https:\/\/www.ofcourseimright.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/09\/mesh-insecurity-1-1024x370.png\")
<\/p>\nWhat to do?<\/h3>\n