A Secure Framework for OTA Smart Device Ecosystems Using ECC Encryption and Biometrics

Abstract

As we move towards a world where all the traditional household appliances and basic industrial devices are being transformed into interactive high-computing devices, an ecosystem of these smart devices is emerging. With this impending revolution, often coined the Internet of Things, one of the understated challenges is the security infrastructure that must accompany the deployment of this ecosystem. In this paper we propose a security framework that leverages hierarchical hardware memory mapping, modularity of the Operating System, and an efficient biometric aided ECC cryptosystem to work together towards this security need. We focus on the secure and efficient implementation of OTA updates and inter-device communication. Our work shows that by integrating several novel improvements based on real system considerations with state-of-the art techniques, we can build a commercially feasible security framework for these devices that is 35% faster and 5% more load efficient than current state-of-the-art ECC-based cryptosystems and OTA compression schemes.