Latency based device fingerprinting in a low-power industrial wireless sensor network

Security is a key challenge for any IIoT network and more so for constrained IWSN deployments. Novel methods are thus required to enhance security, taking into consideration the lossy and low power nature of the IWSN. The use of ICMP packets is proposed as a method to generate fingerprinting information for IWSN devices. The ICMP based method uses the round-trip time information in the ICMP header as a fingerprinting metric. The results showed that the effect of the physical layer can be averaged out of the measurement if enough samples are available. A linear relationship was found between hop count and round-trip time for a static network which can be used in the design phase of the IWSN network or alternatively as a method to fingerprint routing anomalies in real-time. The ICMP method was able to differentiate between devices from different vendors, but unable to fingerprint devices from the same vendor due to physical layer interference. The work shows that fingerprinting in an IWSN using the ICMP method is possible if the timing delta under investigation is an order of magnitude larger than the timing variation introduced by the physical layer while maintaining a reasonable signal-to-noise ratio.

Grantor dc:publisher

University of Pretoria

Year dc:date.issued

2021

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Hancke, Gerhard P.

• UCTD
• Fingerprinting
• Industrial Internet of things (IIoT)
• Latency
• Security
• Wireless sensor network (WSN)

Statement dc:rights

• © 2019 University of Pretoria. All rights reserved. The copyright in this work vests in the University of Pretoria. No part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of the University of Pretoria.

Language dc:language.iso

en

Dc Identifier Other

S2021

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:repository.up.ac.za:2263/80753