Energy and Activity Analysis based On-chip methods for Mitigating Denial-of-Sleep Attacks in Ultra-low Power IoT Devices

低功耗物联网（IoT）传感设备中有限且通常稀缺的可用能源（例如电池）已成为其独特的弱点，往往容易受到网络攻击。该项目旨在开发一种创新的硬件安全机制，以保护可用的能源，以支持此类设备更长的使用寿命。该项目将开发一种本地芯片硬件安全机制，从根本上增强安全性，同时降低功耗和成本开销。所提出的技术具有变革性，并有可能加强超低功耗应用的安全性。该项目的研究成果将在主要的硬件安全和电路会议上作为教程传播，以提高对低功耗传感设备安全漏洞的认识。该项目将为研究生和本科生提供电路设计、传感系统和网络安全方面的培训平台。此外，还将为公众提供新的教育材料，介绍电路设计在安全应用中的考虑因素，以及在安全、面积和功率方面可能存在的权衡。通过本科生研究经验（REU）计划和年度暑期项目，计划为来自少数民族服务机构和高中的访问学生参与研究。该研究旨在为物联网传感设备开发超低功耗、片上硬件安全解决方案。低功耗传感设备的通信和传感活动占空比，因此大部分时间都在睡觉，以保存和收集能量。拒绝睡眠攻击针对这一特征，通过频繁的唤醒和重复的通信请求来快速消耗他们储存的能量，从而拒绝他们急需的睡眠。该项目的目标是通过分析传感设备的能量消耗模式来探索防御拒绝睡眠攻击的新方法。他们的活动和能量消耗模式可以作为特征提取出来，并学会区分拒绝睡眠攻击和设备的常规活动。该项目将开发一种片上学习方法来防止拒绝睡眠攻击。将开发一种能量监测系统，以持续跟踪传感装置中能量的可用性和消耗情况。监控系统将挖掘电源管理系统的关键电路点，实现低成本的硬件解决方案。此外，接收信号强度指示器（RSSI）电路的架构将得到改进，以在超低功耗水平下以更低的面积开销运行。该电路将驻留在无线电前端之外，并将持续监测射频信道的干扰攻击。所提出的方法允许超低功耗和更小的面积，确保更低的成本开销，作为新的硬件安全解决方案，可在各种物联网传感应用中进行转换。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

The finite and often scarce available sources of energy (e.g., batteries) in low-power internet-of-things (IoT) sensing devices have presented themselves as unique weak points often being vulnerable to cyber-attacks. This project aims to develop an innovative hardware security mechanism to protect the available energy source to support longer operational life-time for such devices. This project will develop a local, on-chip hardware security mechanism to enhance security at the root but with lower power and cost overhead. The proposed techniques are transformative and has the potential to harden security in ultra-low power applications. Research outcomes from this project will be disseminated as tutorials at leading hardware security and circuit conferences to raise awareness about security vulnerabilities in low-power sensing devices. This project will provide a platform for training graduate and undergraduate students on circuit design, sensing systems, and cybersecurity. New educational materials for the general public on the security applications of circuit design considerations and possible tradeoffs for security, area, and power will also be developed. Engagements of undergraduate students in research through the research experience for undergraduates (REU) program and annual summer projects are planned for visiting students from minority serving institutions, and high schools. This research aims to develop ultra-low power, on-chip, hardware security solutions for IoT sensing devices. Low-power sensing devices duty-cycle their communication and sensing activity and as such spend the large fraction of their time sleeping to conserve and harvest energy. Denial-of-sleep attacks target this feature to deny them of much-needed sleep by initiating frequent wake up and repeated communication requests to quickly drain their stored energy. The goal of this project is to explore new methods of defense against denial-of-sleep attacks by analyzing the energy consumption patterns of a sensing device. Their activity and energy consumption patterns can be extracted as features and learned to differentiate a denial-of-sleep attack from a regular activity of the device. This project will develop an on-chip learning method to prevent denial-of-sleep attacks. An energy monitoring system will be developed to continuously track the availability and consumption of the energy in a sensing device. The monitoring system will tap into key circuit points of the power management system to realize a lower cost hardware solution. Further, the architecture of a received signal strength indicator (RSSI) circuit will be advanced to operate at ultra-low power level with a lower area overhead. This circuit will reside outside of the radio front-end and will continuously monitor the RF channel for jamming attacks. The proposed method allows ultra-low power consumption and lower area which ensures lower cost overhead as new hardware security solutions to be translational across a variety of IoT sensing applications.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.