Internet of Things device authentication via electromagnetic fingerprints

Abstract

We quickly approach a future where Internet of Things (IoT) devices are the norm. In this scenario, humans are surrounded by a multitude of heterogeneous devices that assist them in almost every aspect of their daily routines. The realization of this future demands strong authentication guarantees to ensure that these devices are not abused and that their users are not endangered. However, providing authentication for these systems is challenging due to the high heterogeneity of IoT applications. In this paper, we first review several IoT application scenarios and promising authentication methods for each. We identify th e key characteristics of each IoT application scenario, present the strengths and weaknesses of prominent authentication methods from the literature, and review which authentication methods have been proposed in the literature for each application. Then, we present a novel authentication method for IoT based on electromagnetic noise. The key advantage of electromagnetic noise is that any electronic device intrinsically generates electromagnetic noise during normal operation. We extract features from these electromagnetic emanations and use machine learning algorithms to identify devices based on these features. Our method achieves 77% accuracy when identifying devices among a set of seven devices.