A Novel Approach for Security Situational Awareness in the Internet of Things

TL;DR

This paper introduces a dynamic security situational awareness model for IoT environments using stochastic Petri nets and game theory, effectively identifying vulnerabilities and attack paths in smart environments.

Contribution

It presents the first dynamic SSA model for complex IoT environments, combining SCPN and Markov Game theory for comprehensive security analysis.

Findings

Effectively identifies vulnerable devices and attack paths

Demonstrates the model's ability to mitigate attack impacts

Provides a macroscopic trend curve of security status

Abstract

Internet of Things (IoT) is characterized by various of heterogeneous devices and facing numerous threats. Modeling security of IoT is still a certain challenge. This paper defines a Stochastic Colored Petri Net (SCPN) for IoT-based smart environment and then proposes a Markov Game model for security situational awareness (SSA) in the defined SCPN. All possible attack paths are computed by the SCPN, and antagonistic behavior of both attackers and defenders are taken into consideration dynamically according to Game Theory. Two attack scenarios in smart home environment are taken into consideration to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed model. The proposed model can form a macroscopic trend curve of security situation. Analysis of the results shows the capabilities of the proposed model in finding vulnerable devices and potential attack paths, and even mitigating the impact of attacks. To our knowledge, this is the first attempt to establish a dynamic SSA model for a complex IoT-based smart environment.