Secure bootstrapping of nodes in a CoAP network

Abstract

In today's world of home automation, smart objects are interconnected and participate in the Internet of Things. Being part of a very sensible eco-system, these entities must be secured against various kinds of attacks. Smart home appliances such as light bulbs or window shutters have very low processing power and networking capacities and more often than not lack of input/output devices such as keyboards or displays. Therefore, special protocols have been developed to enable lightweight and secure communication. Yet, the secure configuration of new nodes in a network has not been solved satisfactory. In this paper we present a three-phase protocol to bootstrap constrained devices in a wireless sensor network based on IPv6 and the Constrained Application Protocol (CoAP). The protocol phases include service discovery, distribution of security credentials, and application-specific node configuration.