The Internet of Things: Vision & challenges

The Internet of Things (IoT) was of a vision in which all physical objects are tagged and uniquely identified using RFID transponders or readers. Nowadays, research into the IoT has extended this vision to the connectivity of Things to anything, anyone, anywhere and at anytime. The IoT has grown into multiple dimensions, which encompasses various networks of applications, computers, devices, as well as physical and virtual objects, referred to as things or objects, that are interconnected together using communication technologies such as, wireless, wired and mobile networks, RFID, Bluetooth, GPS systems, and other evolving technologies. This paradigm is a major shift from an essentially computer-based network model to a fully distributed network of smart objects. This change poses serious challenges in terms of architecture, connectivity, efficiency, security and provision of services among many others. This paper studies the state-of-the art of the IoT. In addition, some major security and privacy issues are described and a new attack vector is introduced, referred to as the “automated invasion attack”.