A Study of Security Attacks on Internet of Things and Its Possible Solutions

Internet of Things integrates objects with unique addressing schemes to their digital processing platforms via communicating network to create advanced control application systems with minimum human interaction. Internet of Things network is expected to have a device/object base of around 212 billion by the year 2020. Such a huge base of devices demands special security mechanisms. The security lags of the hardware and software components of the devices involved comprise to the overall security threat to the Internet of Things paradigm. Internet of Things in its basic form is a three-layered architecture, having physical, network and application layers. This paper discusses the potential attacks on the Internet of Things at each layer of its basic architecture while providing insights about their severity and impact over an Internet of Things network. The paper further elaborates on solutions about the physical security of the Internet of Things devices under a constrained environment and the need for security in the network section where protocols for routing and encryption are implemented. The paper also reviews the solutions at the application level focusing on the valid access to data available on mobile and web interface. Finally, the paper concludes with the discussion regarding the current security scenario and future directions.