Wireless Internet of things (IoTs) consists of devices with varying levels of security connected over a shared communication medium. This can allow compromised devices to deviate from the communication protocol and potentially disrupt the communication of other devices. The existing theoretical models of communication, for the most part, assume users/devices which do not deviate maliciously from the prescribed protocols. While attacks by external adversaries such as jammers and eavesdroppers have been studied, insider/ Byzantine attacks have not received much attention. This is precisely the form that attacks on IoTs take. As a first step towards this, we consider the uplink of a network and model it using a multiple access channel where users may deviate maliciously. In this talk, we will investigate this model under different security guarantees: 1) When can honest devices communicate reliably even in the presence of malicious devices? 2) Is it possible to identify the malicious devices (when present) so that they can be taken offline? 3) When is it possible to detect the presence of malicious devices (without necessarily identifying them)?
The talk is based on joint work with Mayank Bakshi, Bikash Kumar Dey and Vinod Prabhakaran.
