Security in the Internet of Things through obfuscation and diversification

Abstract

Internet of Things (IoT) is composed of heterogeneous embedded and wearable sensors and devices that collect and share information over the Internet. This may contain private information of the users. Thus, securing the information and preserving the privacy of the users are of paramount importance. In this paper we look into the possibility of applying the two techniques, obfuscation and diversification, in IoT. Diversification and obfuscation techniques are two outstanding security techniques used for proactively protecting the software and code. We propose obfuscating and diversifying the operating systems and APIs on the IoT devices, and also some communication protocols enabling the external use of IoT devices. We believe that the proposed ideas mitigate the risk of unknown zero-day attacks, large-scale attacks, and also the targeted attacks.