A crowd-assisted architecture for securing BLE beacon-based IoT infrastructure

Kang Eun Jeon, James She, Simon Wong

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contributionpeer-review

5 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

A BLE beacon is a small electronic device that has recently been proposed as a building block to construct an infrastructure supporting emerging smart applications. However, due to its simple communication protocol architecture, which broadcasts a static payload, a BLE beacon-based infrastructure is vulnerable to different types of abuses and attacks, in particular free-riding and device spoofing. Many beacon manufacturers propose dynamically randomizing beacon advertisement packets at the device firmware level as a solution. However, this approach is difficult to implement for already deployed beacon nodes as it requires a firmware update on each device. To alleviate these drawbacks, a crowd-assisted architecture for securing BLE beacons is proposed in this paper. A detailed architecture is presented along with experimental results and an implementation to demonstrate its feasibility. It is found that the beacon ID can be changed by user's mobile phone within a 20 m range with probability of almost 100% under both stationary and mobile conditions.

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publication2018 IEEE Wireless Communications and Networking Conference, WCNC 2018
PublisherInstitute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Inc.
Pages1-6
Number of pages6
ISBN (Electronic)9781538617342
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 8 Jun 2018
Externally publishedYes
Event2018 IEEE Wireless Communications and Networking Conference, WCNC 2018 - Barcelona, Spain
Duration: 15 Apr 201818 Apr 2018

Publication series

NameIEEE Wireless Communications and Networking Conference, WCNC
Volume2018-April
ISSN (Print)1525-3511

Conference

Conference2018 IEEE Wireless Communications and Networking Conference, WCNC 2018
Country/TerritorySpain
CityBarcelona
Period15/04/1818/04/18

Keywords

  • BLE beacons
  • Bluetooth Low Energy
  • Internet of Things security

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