Introduction
Internet of Things or IoT consists of computing devices that are interrelated. Users are able to gain deep automation, integration as well as analysis within systems (Whitmore, Agarwal & Da Xu, 2015). IoT makes maximum utilization of advanced technologies for the purpose of sensing, robotics as well as networking. IoT is gaining importance with time. It is responsible for enhancing the aspect of life and making everything “smart” in a virtual manner.
This report discusses about the issues related to the cyber-security of Internet of Things. It also focuses on the future of IoT. This report also gives an overview of the positive role that IoT plays in the society. It discusses about the use of IoT in facilitating criminal activities as well. The social, legal as well as political aspects of IoT are discussed in this report.
Recent Cyber-security Issues of IoT
Cyber attacks and threats are growing with the use of Internet Technology. These types of cyber attacks can be caused by hackers, governments as well as criminals (Abomhara, 2015). Some common cyber-security issues that can take place are as follows:
Physical attacks: The hardware components are tampered in this type of attack. Most of devices of IoT operate in an outdoor environment which can be susceptible to various physical attacks and threats.
Reconnaissance attacks: In this type of attack unauthorized discovery as well as mapping of services, systems and vulnerabilities takes place.
DoS: In this attack the network resources are made unavailable to the intended users. The IoT devices have low memory capacity and limited resources for computational purpose (Kasinathan et al., 2013). Therefore most of the IoT devices are vulnerable to DoS attack.
Access attacks: The attacker can gain unauthorized or illegal access to devices and networks. There can be physical access as well as remote access.
Privacy attacks: Protection of IoT privacy has become extremely challenging due to the availability of information. Eavesdropping attack is a common category of attack where the attacker listens to the conservation that is taking place between parties (Fink et al., 2015). The attackers can track users by UID.
Cyber-crimes: Internet can be used for the purpose of exploiting users and sensitive data. Theft of intellectual property, identity theft, fraud and brand theft are examples of cyber-crimes.
Destructive attacks: Internet space can be used for the purpose of causing destruction of property and like through terrorism as well as revenge attacks.
Future of IoT
IoT is expected to bring several benefits in the future. Consumers will be able to access or acquire more products and services based on their work and place. IoT will provide alternative travelling routes and help the users to travel in an efficient manner. Health devices can be used at home for monitoring the health of the people (Singh, Tripathi & Jara, 2014). IoT will help the businesses and organizations to understand the behavior of the customers and provide better products and services to their customers. This will help to improve the customer satisfaction generating more revenue and profit. It will help the businesses to discover new services and products. Farmers can use smart irrigation practices and become more productive by providing water in the correct place. Smart devices can be used for eliminating waste. IoT can improve the road safety and street lighting efficiency by correct data collection methodology. In the future, more number of cities will become smart. Artificial intelligence will be facilitated that will help in machine learning. Routers will get smarter and become more secure than it is now.
IoT- Used for Good and Criminal Purposes
IoT will be able to solve several problems that are faced by the city people. IoT can b e used for several good purposes like:
Creating smart homes: The smart home products will help the citizens to save time and money along with energy (Soliman et al., 2013). It will make the life of the people much simpler than what it is now.
Wearable: Wearable devices have sensors installed in them for the purpose of collecting information regarding the users (Gubbi et al., 2013). This data is processed in order to gain knowledge about the users. These devices generally cover the entertainment, fitness and health requirements.
Smart cities: The use of smart surveillance, energy management, and urban security, environment monitoring and automated transportation will make the cities smart.
IoT is growing at a fast pace. The number of devices that will be connected to the web will increase in the future. IoT can be used for criminal purposes like:
Criminals can hack into the wearable devices to access the sensitive and valuable information of the users. They can alter the settings of the health devices harming the patient in a severe manner.
Cyber worms and viruses can be injected in the web connected devices to gain control of the devices. DDoS attacks can also take place.
Terrorism and revenge attacks are possible due to the increasing growth of IoT. The attackers can use the cyber space to plan any kind of destruction to the lives and properties of the people.
Social, Political and Legal Aspects
IoT helps in creating social capital by allowing information flow across residential and professional communities in an effective manner. It is known for providing significant benefits to the society (Da Xu, He & Li, 2014). The cost of storing, finding and communicating political information has been made less. IoT will generate new business patterns that will need to make contracts that will need the help of lawyers. New legal factors need to be incorporated in the contracts of health, financial and business sectors.
Conclusion
This report concludes that IoT is playing a significant role in the lives of the people. It discussed some of the cyber-security issues related to IoT. It said that Packet sniffers, scanning of network ports and traffic analysis are examples of cyber-security attacks. Brute force and dictionary attacks can take place in order to crack the password of a system. Cyber espionage takes place where malicious software is used for spying on secret information of organization, individuals or government. This report spoke about the future of IoT along with its good impact on the society. This report gave an overview of some of the possible criminal activities that can take place by the use of IoT. This report also gave a brief overview of the various legal, social as well as political aspects of IoT. Strong security policies can help in overcoming the security threats of IoT.
References
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Kasinathan, P., Pastrone, C., Spirito, M. A., & Vinkovits, M. (2013, October). Denial-of-Service detection in 6LoWPAN based Internet of Things. In Wireless and Mobile Computing, Networking and Communications (WiMob), 2013 IEEE 9th International Conference on (pp. 600-607). IEEE.
Singh, D., Tripathi, G., & Jara, A. J. (2014, March). A survey of Internet-of-Things: Future vision, architecture, challenges and services. In Internet of things (WF-IoT), 2014 IEEE world forum on (pp. 287-292). IEEE.
Soliman, M., Abiodun, T., Hamouda, T., Zhou, J., & Lung, C. H. (2013, December). Smart home: Integrating internet of things with web services and cloud computing. In Cloud Computing Technology and Science (CloudCom), 2013 IEEE 5th International Conference on (Vol. 2, pp. 317-320). IEEE.
Whitmore, A., Agarwal, A., & Da Xu, L. (2015). The Internet of Things—A survey of topics and trends. Information Systems Frontiers, 17(2), 261-274.
