Enhancing Cyber Security of LoRaWAN Gateways under Adversarial Attacks.

Area of Science:

• Computer Science
• Cybersecurity
• Network Engineering

Background:

• The Internet of Things (IoT) relies on specifications like Long Range Wide Area Network (LoRaWAN) for device connectivity.
• Existing LoRaWAN gateways are vulnerable to malicious attacks due to their design as obedient relays.
• Such vulnerabilities can lead to network malfunctions and reduced traffic efficiency.

Purpose of the Study:

• To propose and evaluate a novel certificate authentication technique for enhancing the cybersecurity of LoRaWAN gateways.
• To address the security challenges posed by the inherent design of LoRaWAN gateways.

Main Methods:

• Implementation of a Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) solution.
• Utilizing a two-tier Certificate Authority (CA) setup, comprising a root-CA and an intermediate-CA.
• Simulation to validate the effectiveness of the proposed security technique.

Main Results:

• The implemented secure solution successfully discarded approximately 66.67% of packets originating from illegitimate gateways (GWs).
• Demonstrated significant improvement in filtering malicious traffic from untrusted sources.

Conclusions:

• The proposed certificate authentication technique offers a promising solution for bolstering LoRaWAN gateway security.
• The findings validate the effectiveness of the PKI-based approach in mitigating attacks against IoT networks.