TY - GEN
T1 - Secure and user-friendly over-the-air firmware distribution in a portable faraday cage
AU - Striegel, Martin
AU - Heyszl, Johann
AU - Jakobsmeier, Florian
AU - Matveev, Yacov
AU - Sigl, Georg
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2020 ACM.
PY - 2020/7/8
Y1 - 2020/7/8
N2 - Setting up a large-scale wireless sensor networks (WSNs) is challenging, as firmware must be distributed and trust between sensor nodes and a backend needs to be established. To perform this task efficiently, we propose an approach named Box, which utilizes an intelligent Faraday Cage (FC). The FC acquires firmware images and secret keys from a backend, patches the firmware with the keys and deploys those customized images over-the-air (OTA) to sensor nodes placed in the FC. Electromagnetic (EM) shielding protects this exchange against passive attackers. We place few demands on the sensor node, not requiring additional hardware components or firmware customized by the manufacturer. We describe this novel workflow, implement the Box and a backend system and demonstrate the feasibility of our approach by batch-deploying firmware to multiple commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) sensor nodes. We conduct a user-study with 31 participants with diverse backgrounds and find, that our approach is both faster and more user-friendly than firmware distribution over a wired connection.
AB - Setting up a large-scale wireless sensor networks (WSNs) is challenging, as firmware must be distributed and trust between sensor nodes and a backend needs to be established. To perform this task efficiently, we propose an approach named Box, which utilizes an intelligent Faraday Cage (FC). The FC acquires firmware images and secret keys from a backend, patches the firmware with the keys and deploys those customized images over-the-air (OTA) to sensor nodes placed in the FC. Electromagnetic (EM) shielding protects this exchange against passive attackers. We place few demands on the sensor node, not requiring additional hardware components or firmware customized by the manufacturer. We describe this novel workflow, implement the Box and a backend system and demonstrate the feasibility of our approach by batch-deploying firmware to multiple commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) sensor nodes. We conduct a user-study with 31 participants with diverse backgrounds and find, that our approach is both faster and more user-friendly than firmware distribution over a wired connection.
KW - firmware distribution
KW - internet of things
KW - key distribution
KW - over-the-air updates
KW - wireless sensor network
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85091979247&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1145/3395351.3399342
DO - 10.1145/3395351.3399342
M3 - Conference contribution
AN - SCOPUS:85091979247
T3 - WiSec 2020 - Proceedings of the 13th ACM Conference on Security and Privacy in Wireless and Mobile Networks
SP - 173
EP - 183
BT - WiSec 2020 - Proceedings of the 13th ACM Conference on Security and Privacy in Wireless and Mobile Networks
PB - Association for Computing Machinery
T2 - 13th ACM Conference on Security and Privacy in Wireless and Mobile Networks, WiSec 2020
Y2 - 8 July 2020 through 10 July 2020
ER -