Beyond Crypto: Physical-Layer Security for Internet of Things Devices

The boom of connected Internet of Things (IoT) nodes and ubiquity of wireless communications are projected to increase wireless data traffic by several orders of magnitude in the near future. While these future scalable networks support increasing numbers of wireless devices utilizing the electromagnetic (EM) spectrum, ensuring the security of wireless communications and sensing is also a critical requirement. Wirelessly connected sensor nodes transmit and collect private and sensitive data, e.g., health-related or financial information, that must be communicated securely over the air.

The boom of connected Internet of Things (IoT) nodes and ubiquity of wireless communications are projected to increase wireless data traffic by several orders of magnitude in the near future. While these future scalable networks support increasing numbers of wireless devices utilizing the electromagnetic (EM) spectrum, ensuring the security of wireless communications and sensing is also a critical requirement. Wirelessly connected sensor nodes transmit and collect private and sensitive data, e.g., health-related or financial information, that must be communicated securely over the air. However, tight resource constraints, massive scale of connectivity, and new threat models targeting the physical layer make it challenging to address these security deficiencies only in software [1]–[4]. This work provides an overview of physical-layer threat models targeting these low-power wireless communication systems and surveys several hardware countermeasures for IoT devices operating in the radio-frequency (RF)-to-terahertz spectrum. To illustrate an example physical-layer attack surface analysis, we discuss two of these hardware solutions in detail: 1) protecting against a time- and modulation-based attack targeting selective jamming of low-power IoT communications and 2) another attack scenario exploiting authentication protocol weaknesses for disrupting the operation of an on-demand drug delivery system using an implantable medical device (IMD).