Access Control for Apps Running on Constrained Devices in the Internet of Things

Abstract

The increasing interest in applications for the Internet of Things (IoT) has led to the widespread use of efficient but limited operating systems like Contiki OS. Applications running on constrained devices in the IoT should only be able to access those resources which are specified by the user. While on mobile platforms such as the Google Android and the Apple iOS various access control mechanisms are in use, on IoT platforms such as Contiki OS this is not yet provided. In this paper, we explain a number of existing approaches in the mobile ecosystem and mention the research challenges for applying those approaches to one of the well-known operating systems in the IoT ecosystem, i.e., Contiki OS. The main problem is that operating systems for constrained devices in the IoT are quite limited and do not provide any memory protection or virtualization support. As the main contribution, we propose our novel approach for providing fine-grained access controls in Contiki OS under these constraints.