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Secure IoT Communication in Industrial Enviroments

The fourth industrial revolution merges the internet of things (IOT) with wireless communications and the smart factory to a cyber physical system (CPS). If (mobile) devices related to machines and not persons are communicating wirelessly, this is referred to as machine-type-communications (MTC). It is common sense that future fifth generation (5G) radio networks will include native support of MTC. Also, in the ongoing standardization process of current fourth generation (4G) mobile communications, termed as Long Term Evolution (LTE), support for MTC is being included.

For critical MTC - which refers to wireless connectivity for industrial processes, as well as applications such as traffic safety and control of critical infrastructure - the current challenges are the provision of (wireless) communication links featuring safety, reliability, security and low latency. We focus on industrial settings (e.g. smart, flexible production) and aim for enabling secure wireless communication of MTC devices with their network infrastructure with a minimum of user interaction in order to protect critical industrial processes.

Secure IoT Communication in Industrial Enviroments

Team
 

Nuria Ballber-Torres

Eshegh Dehmollaian

Bernhard Etzlinger

Contact
 

E-Mail:
Bernhard Etzlinger

Decentralized Authentication

Our research focuses on authentication, one major fundament for secure communication aside of confidentiality and integrity, that is not solved satisfactorily for MTC. Historically, the GSM communication standard featured security algorithms (and specifically authentication mechanisms) that soon turned out to be poor. Since the introduction of the A5 encryption algorithms, numerous exploitable protocol weaknesses have been revealed rendering GSM an insecure communication channel. The follow-up standards UMTS and LTE tried to improve the GSM shortcomings emphasizing strong cryptographic authentication and secure channel protocols. Unfortunately, many up to date 4G modem implementations still allow bypassing security rather easily. Furthermore, authentication protocols are largely centralized and geared towards mobile network operators, making them hard to apply to modern LAN scenarios.

In contrast to currently standardized authentication protocols that are managed centrally, we investigate schemes that support decentralized architectures with local decisions for authentication (on factory-floor level). The focus is spatio-temporal access control that unifies physical layer joint synchronization and localization methods with higher layer perimeter based authentication. Such schemes are specifically suitable for MTC as they require low administrative overhead, they simplify the management of mobile clients in industrial settings, and they leverage a physically interpretable trusted perimeter.

 

Research Topics

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