The Internet of Things (IoT) adds wired or wireless connectivity to a slew of applications: factory automation, automobiles, medical equipment, smart cities, smart farms, building and home automation, appliances, smart grids, personal electronics, and many more.
In many cases IoT edge nodes are designed with embedded processors with only enough functionality to provide the required performance at low cost, so they don’t have enough spare processing power to implement a full array of security measures, or even any at all.
The billions of nodes present rich opportunities for mischief. Hackers can take control of multiple devices to build a botnet. Then they can use the combined computing power to send spam, spy on organizations, mount distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks, or even amass Bitcoins through cryptomining (Fig. 1).
1. Coming soon to an IoT device near you. (Source: HDQwalls.com)