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IWD2243Wireless & Mobile Security

Chapter 5 : Wireless Embedded System Security

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5.1 Wireless Technologies Wi Fi, cellular technologies, ZigBee, Bluetooth. Cellular communications – most recognizable

form of wireless technologies. See figure 23.1 : Comparison of Wi-Fi, ZigBee,

Bluetooth, and Cellular GSM, page 603. Most of the Wireless Embedded technologies

has been describe before as the following :- WiFi & cellular technologies – Chapter 2, Security

in TWN Bluetooth – Chapter 4, Security in wireless ad hoc

network.

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5.2 ZigBee Designed around IEEE 802.15.4 low-power

radio standard. Aims to be the go-to standard for industrial

wireless communication where troughput is less of an issue, and flexibility, power consumption, and cost are primary concern.

See figure 23.3 : Throughput comparison, page 611

Develop and maintained by ZigBee Alliance ZigBee Alliance is a consortium of

corporations that all utilize the protocol

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5.2 ZigBee Low power consumption, low system resource

requirements, and low throughput. The bandwidth of ZigBee is comparable to dial

up modem (up to 250KB/s). ZigBee may seem very similar to Bluetooth Primarily concerned with the flexibility of the

network, support several network topologies that increase reliability of the entire network.

Geared toward industrial automation (industrial standard)

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5.2 ZigBee Security in ZigBee

Self healing mesh network Allows for thousand of nodes to be included in a

single network (PAN) Supports several different network topologies,

including mesh and clusters. See figure 23.4 : ZigBee topologies, page 612 Self healing network – the network is resilient and

can deal with nodes coming in and out of the network, in a noisy (RF noise) industrial environment.

Self healing property make redundancy very easy to implement.

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5.2 ZigBee Security in ZigBee (cont.)

Ex. – Attacker taking out nodes in a sensor network to prevent certain information to be collected.

In WiFi network, once a node is dropped, it must reestablish the connection, including any authentication required.

In ZigBee network, there can be many more nodes, and if any nodes are dropped due to tampering, the network continue to function.

Variety of network topology supported, different security considerations.

Ad hoc peer-to-peer topologies, all nodes are considered equal.

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5.2 ZigBee Security in ZigBee (cont.)

Star & Tree topologies – there must be a coordinator that facilitates the network.

ZigBee nodes can also function as routers, directing communications between nodes that may not be able to communicates directly

Provides low level security for communications between individual nodes using AES and message authentication code scheme.