Performance analysis of cryptographic protocols for the Internet of Things

Abstract

With the increasing growth of the Internet of Things (IoT), more and more devices are connected to the Internet to exchange data. These devices are used in many different fields and most of them are powered with battery so there is a need of using efficient protocols to maximize the durability. On the other hand there is also the necessity of securing all these devices from possible cyber attacks. The MQ Telemetry Transport (MQTT) protocol meets the requirement of efficiency but it is inherently insecure. A simple solution is to use the SSL protocol to secure the communication channel. Unfortunately the use of SSL has a negative impact on performance. In this thesis we measure the cost of TLS on MQTT and we propose some efficient solutions and alternatives to secure MQTT.