A back-end offload architecture for security of resource-constrained networks

Abstract

Recent years have seen the development of successful internet of things (IoT) technologies based on an IP-enabled 6LoWPAN, which enables the extensive message exchange of information generated from various applications such as healthcare, smart home, and factory automation. Because IoT devices are closely related to the human life, they generally handle critical data which must be protected from a malicious adversary. However, a majority of IoT devices are resource-constrained in terms of memory and computational ability, so that they cannot provide heavy security protocols and authentication. To protect connections over constrained networks, we introduce a back-end offload architecture which offloads the processing of a security protocol to a specified back-end offloader. The offloader assists constrained devices back-end by handling the packets of handshake procedure and encrypted application data. The load balancing of offloaders and the protection of offload messages are also provided in the design. The proposed architecture allows an extremely constrained device to establish a secure session by utilizing high-level authentications such as public key infrastructure or certificate, without the burden of deploying heavy security modules. This research would be advantageous for incompetent nodes to support security and reduce cost at the same time.