A Comprehensive Survey of Attacks without Physical Access Targeting Hardware Vulnerabilities in IoT/IIoT Devices, and Their Detection Mechanisms

Abstract

With the advances in the field of the Internet of Things (IoT) and Industrial IoT (IIoT), these devices are increasingly used in daily life or industry. To reduce costs related to the time required to develop these devices, security features are usually not considered. This situation creates a major security concern. Many solutions have been proposed to protect IoT/IIoT against various attacks, most of which are based on attacks involving physical access. However, a new class of attacks has emerged targeting hardware vulnerabilities in the micro-architecture that do not require physical access. We present attacks based on micro-architectural hardware vulnerabilities and the side effects they produce in the system. In addition, we present security mechanisms that can be implemented to address some of these attacks. Most of the security mechanisms target a small set of attack vectors or a single specific attack vector. As many attack vectors exist, solutions must be found to protect against a wide variety of threats. This survey aims to inform designers about the side effects related to attacks and detection mechanisms that have been described in the literature. For this purpose, we present two tables listing and classifying the side effects and detection mechanisms based on the given criteria.