Securing Iot Devices With Embedded Trust

Introduction

The Internet of Things (IoT) is expanding at an exponential rate, and so are security threats related to these devices. As IoT devices become more common in our lives, the requirement for security implementation becomes more important. The ingestion of IoT devices into our lives makes them prime targets for cyber-attacks. Hence, the subject of this blog post is securing IoT devices with embedded trust.

Implications of Security in IoT

The massive expansion of IoT implies a consequential rise in the number of devices having network connectivity that might be exploited by hackers. These threats consist of data breaches, allowing unauthorized access to the device, enabling attacks on other devices or network infrastructure, interruption of services, and the list goes on.

To incorporate high-level security in IoT devices, one solution is adopting 'Embedded Trust' - the security development environment for embedded systems.

When a device's system is embedded with trust, it significantly reduces the chances of unauthorized access, and thereby ensuring the system’s integrity.

Embedded Trust

Embedded Trust is a security development environment tool for IoT devices. It affects the device's entire lifecycle, making it resistant to tampering or hacking attempts.

In an IoT ecosystem, embedding trust can be achieved by providing a dedicated secure element chip on the IoT device. Now, let's see how we can embed trust in an IoT device using some embedded C code.

Code Snippet

Here is an example of how to initialize a secure element chip (ATECC608A) on an IoT device:

#include "atecc608a_se.h"

#define ASSERT_STATUS(actual, expected) \
    if ((actual) != (expected)) \
    { \
        printf("Failure at %s:%d", __FILE__, __LINE__); \
        while (1); \
    }

int main(void)
{
    ATCA_STATUS status = ATCA_GEN_FAIL;

    /* Initialize the crypto device */
    status = atcab_init(&cfg_ateccx08a_i2c_default);
    ASSERT_STATUS(status, ATCA_SUCCESS);

    /* Lock configuration zone */
    status = atcab_lock_config_zone();
    ASSERT_STATUS(status, ATCA_SUCCESS);

    printf("Secure element has been initialized and locked successfully.\n");

    while (1);
}

In the above code, the ATCAB_INIT() function initializes the cryptography device (ATECC608A secure element in our case). After the initialization, the ATCAB_LOCK_CONFIG_ZONE() function locks the configuration zone of the secure element, hence embedding trust into the device.

Conclusion

Securing IoT devices goes beyond data encryption and user authentication. Having a security-first mindset in IoT development processes is more important than ever. Embedded trust is one such measure which provides robust security for the entire life cycle of IoT devices. As IoT continues to expand, protect these devices' integrity by embedding trust into their systems is a necessity, not an option.