Threat Modeling—How to Visualize Attacks on IOTA?

Abstract

Internet of Things (IoT) has been deployed in a vast number of smart applications with the aim to bring ease and comfort into our lives. However, with the expansion of IoT applications, the number of security and privacy breaches has also increased, which brings into question the resilience of existing security and trust mechanisms. Furthermore, the contemporaneous centralized technology is posing significant challenges viz scalability, transparency and efficiency to wide range of IoT applications such as smart logistics, where millions of IoT devices need to be connected simultaneously. Alternatively, IOTA is a distributed ledger technology that offers resilient security and trust mechanisms and a decentralized architecture to overcome IoT impediments. IOTA has already been implemented in many applications and has clearly demonstrated its significance in real-world applications. Like any other technology, IOTA unfortunately also encounters security vulnerabilities. The purpose of this study is to explore and highlight security vulnerabilities of IOTA and simultaneously demonstrate the value of threat modeling in evaluating security vulnerabilities of distributed ledger technology. IOTA vulnerabilities are scrutinized in terms of feasibility and impact and we have also presented prevention techniques where applicable. To identify IOTA vulnerabilities, we have examined existing literature and online blogs. Literature available on this topic is very limited so far. As far as we know IOTA has barely been addressed in the traditional journals, conferences and books. In total we have identified six vulnerabilities. We used Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS v3.0) to further categorize these vulnerabilities on the basis of their feasibility and impact.