Secured System Architecture for the Internet of Things Using a Two Factor Authentication Protocol

Abstract

The security concerns for the Internet of Things (IoT) systems have become a very important topic due to the rapid development of IoT in many different fields including industrial, commercial, personal, etc. Since the protocols used for IoT communication are usually very light-weighted, it is more insecure when compared with internet protocols due to the nature of IoT devices been resource limited. The development of IoT systems has been rapidly growing, however there is still no groundbreaking development for the security aspect of the IoT system. Hence, the existing security mechanisms are either not applicable in IoT systems or can no longer satisfy the security requirements for IoT systems. This thesis presents a solution that utilizes Two Factor Authentication (TFA) in the system’s authentication protocol, which requires both the Server and the Broker in the IoT systems to function as the authentication guards. The solution is designed to be generic so that it can be deployed into virtually any IoT system, and more importantly meets the security requirements and guidelines for IoT systems. Specifically for this thesis, the TFA solution will be deployed on a fleet management system for experimental and testing purposes. This is also a demonstration of how this TFA protocol can be used in different IoT applications. The experimental part of this thesis will include a prototype that includes the three main components the Server, the Broker and the Client, which will be coded using Python, then use Wireshark to act as an eavesdropper on the system. For the protocol verification part, the TFA protocol was modelled as a Coloured Petri Net and uses a Coloured Petri Net simulation tool to prove that the modelled Net indeed possess the properties of Coloured Petri Net.