Análise e implementação de uma camada de segurança complementar na rede LoRaWAN

Abstract

The Internet of Things (IoT) has been gaining popularity in recent years, and LoRa technology, with its communication protocol LoRaWAN, has been widely used by people and companies, for meeting the demands of the IoT industry. The Federal University of Santa Maria (UFSM) is no exception, as it also has implemented LoRa network. However, its protocol is recent, and it is subject to security flaws, which can compromise the data that travel over the network. Because of this, a study of the LoRa network installation at the university was proposed. This study revealed a potential threat with the use of a public network and application server by UFSM. Then, a solution was proposed, through the implementation of an additional layer of security for the data, using an encryption algorithm, encrypting the data before being transmitted and decrypting them after removing from the server. A lightweight encryption algorithm, called LEA-128, was chosen because it has features that are quite compatible with IoT technologies, such as reduced use of memory resources and less execution time. To validate the algorithm, it was compared with the security standard, AES-128, and was subjected to a brute force attack and the avalanche effect. The algorithm was effective in encrypting and decrypting data, and its validation tests showed that its execution time was, approximately , 30% faster than AES-128