RIoTS: Risk Analysis of IoT Supply Chain Threats

TL;DR

This paper introduces RIoTS, a novel risk assessment framework for IoT supply chains that uses system reliability theory to identify hidden threats and supplier collusion risks affecting IoT security.

Contribution

The paper presents a new framework, RIoTS, which extends existing security analyses by incorporating supply chain risks and supplier grouping effects using reliability theory.

Findings

RIoTS can reveal hidden supply chain threats to IoT systems.

Supplier collusion poses significant risks that are detectable with RIoTS.

The framework enhances understanding of supply chain vulnerabilities in IoT ecosystems.

Abstract

Securing the supply chain of information and communications technology (ICT) has recently emerged as a critical concern for national security and integrity. With the proliferation of Internet of Things (IoT) devices and their increasing role in controlling real world infrastructure, there is a need to analyze risks in networked systems beyond established security analyses. Existing methods in literature typically leverage attack and fault trees to analyze malicious activity and its impact. In this paper, we develop RIoTS, a security risk assessment framework borrowing from system reliability theory to incorporate the supply chain. We also analyze the impact of grouping within suppliers that may pose hidden risks to the systems from malicious supply chain actors. The results show that the proposed analysis is able to reveal hidden threats posed to the IoT ecosystem from potential supplier collusion.