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A Survey on 6LoWPAN Security for IoT: Taxonomy, Architecture, and Future Directions

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Abstract

Provisioning security to the communications, data, and partaking things in resource-constrained IoT is a huge challenge. Due to the scalability and interoperability among low power-consuming networks, 6LoWPAN is used widely in IoT. However, security schemes used by traditional Internet are proven to be very heavy and power-consuming for resource-constrained devices in 6loWPAN. This paper describes various existing security schemes used in different layers of 6LoWPAN based IoT networks in detail and highlights their pros and cons. We pointed out the issues and challenges of lightweight security mechanisms for IoT to enable the researchers to easily and quickly get into the problem domain. Compared to other relevant works, we emphasize open issues and future directions.

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Data availability

We do not analyse or generate any datasets, because our work proceeds within a theoretical approach.

Abbreviations

ABE:

Attribute-based encryption

ACL:

Access control List

AES:

Advanced encryption standard

AKE:

Authenticated key establishment

APKES:

Adaptable pairwise key establishment scheme

BLE:

Bluetooth low energy

CAP:

Contention access period

CBC:

Cipher block chaining

CCM:

Counter with CBC-MAC mode of operation

CFP:

Contention free Period

CNN:

Convolutional neural network

CoAP:

Constrained application protocol

CoAPs:

Constrained application protocol security

CTR:

Counter

DoS:

Denial-of-service

DODAGs:

Destination oriented directed acyclic graphs

DIS:

DODAG information solicitation

DTLS:

Datagram transport layer security

ECC:

Elliptic curve cryptography

E2E:

End-to-end

ECDHE:

Elliptic-curve Diffie-Hellman ephemeral

ECDSA:

Elliptic-curve digital signature algorithm

EBEAP:

Easy broadcast encryption and authentication protocol

ETX:

Expected transmission count

FFD:

Full function device

FPGA:

Field programmable gate array

GCM:

Galois/counter mode

HMAC-SHA1:

Hash-based message authentication code with secure hash algorithm

IoT:

Internet of things

ICV:

Integrity check value

IPv4/v6:

Internet protocol version 4/version 6

IPSec:

Internet protocol security

IDS:

Intrusion detection system

IPSec-AH:

IPSec authentication header

IPSec-ESP:

IPSec encapsulating security payload

IKE:

Internet key exchange

LTK:

Long term key

MAC:

Message authentication code

MAG:

Mobile access gateways

MITM:

Man-in-the-middle

MIC:

Message integrity code

MTU:

Maximum transmission unit

M2M:

Machine-to-machine

MIC-CCM:

Message integrity code with cipher block chaining

NETLMM:

Network-based localized mobility management

PKI:

Public key infrastructure

PKC:

Public key cryptography

PMIPv6:

Proxy mobile IPv6

PUF:

Physical unclonable function

QoS:

Quality-of-service

RFD:

Reduced function device

RF:

Radio frequency

RPL:

IPv6 routing protocol for link layer networks (LLNs)

ROR:

Real-or-random model-based formal security analysis

RSA:

Rivest–Shamir–Adleman cryptograhy

RSSI:

Received signal strength indicator

STK:

Short term key

SMQTT:

Secure message queuing telemetry transport

TCP/IP:

Transmission control protocol/ internet protocol

TLS-PSK:

Transport layer security pre-shared key ciphersuites

TLS/SSL:

Transport layer security/ secure sockets layer

TTP:

Trusted third party

UDP:

User datagram protocol

WSNs:

Wireless sensor networks

6LoWPAN:

IPv6 over low-power wireless personal area networks

6Hs:

6LoWPAN host

6BR:

6LoWPAN edge/border router

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Acknowledgements

The authors are thankful to Visvesvaraya Ph.D. Scheme for Electronics & IT(Ref: DIC/MUM/GA/10(43)), Ministry of Electronics & Information Technology (MeitY), Government of India, for their support in this work.

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  1. School of Computer Science and Engineering, VIT, Chennai, Tamil Nadu, 600127, India

    Leki Chom Thungon

  2. Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur, 721302, India

    Nurzaman Ahmed

  3. Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Maulana Abul Kalam Azad University of Technology, Kolkata, West Bengal, 700064, India

    Debashis De

  4. Department of Information Technology, North-Eastern Hill University, Shillong, 793022, India

    Md. Iftekhar Hussain

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The author Leki Chom Thungon wrote the manuscript under the guidance of the author Md. Iftekhar Hussain. The structure of the review paper was designed with the help of the author Nurzaman Ahmed. The author Debashis De made the necessary corrections and modifications to the paper.

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Thungon, L.C., Ahmed, N., De, D. et al. A Survey on 6LoWPAN Security for IoT: Taxonomy, Architecture, and Future Directions. Wireless Pers Commun 137, 153–197 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11277-024-11382-y

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