State-of-the-Art Software-Based Remote Attestation: Opportunities and Open Issues for Internet of Things.

Area of Science:

• Computer Science
• Cybersecurity
• Network Security

Background:

• The Internet of Things (IoT) ecosystem connects billions of devices, creating vast opportunities but also significant cybersecurity risks.
• Remote Attestation (RA) is vital for verifying the integrity and legitimacy of IoT devices against sophisticated cyber attacks.
• Existing RA solutions often depend on specialized hardware, which is not feasible for all IoT devices, particularly legacy and resource-constrained ones.

Purpose of the Study:

• To survey and analyze existing software-based Remote Attestation (RA) schemes for the Internet of Things (IoT) ecosystem.
• To evaluate the design characteristics and security capabilities of these hardware-independent RA approaches.
• To identify the potential of software-based RA for securing legacy and resource-constrained IoT devices.

Main Methods:

• Comprehensive literature review of software-based Remote Attestation schemes.
• Analysis of design characteristics, security features, advantages, and disadvantages of surveyed RA schemes.
• Evaluation of applicability to diverse IoT environments, including resource-constrained and legacy devices.

Main Results:

• Identified various software-based RA schemes suitable for IoT environments without specialized hardware.
• Detailed analysis of the strengths and weaknesses of each surveyed approach.
• Highlighted the specific challenges and opportunities for implementing RA on legacy and resource-constrained IoT devices.

Conclusions:

• Software-based RA offers a viable solution for enhancing the security of the Internet of Things (IoT), especially for devices lacking dedicated hardware.
• Further research is needed to address open issues and optimize RA schemes for diverse and constrained IoT environments.
• These findings provide valuable insights for researchers and practitioners developing secure IoT solutions.