The IoT Supply Chain Attack Trends-Vulnerabilities and Preventive Measures

ABSTRACT

The lifestyle of people in this century will be categorized as Pre-COVID and Post-COVID lifestyle in the future. The pandemic has influenced every nation and every sector. The Internet of Things has helped the humankind to progress even during the pandemic time. Internet of Things has grown drastically with the industry switching their offices to homes. This has also increased the threat landscape and the attacks are also on rise. Several cyber-attacks are possible with Internet of Things devices. However, Supply chain attacks remain the largest threat as reactive measures to mitigate them are extremely difficult. In addition to that, supply chain attacks are difficult to detect in a network. In most of the cases, they remain unnoticed and they are used to launch espionage and ransom ware attacks. The impact of supply chain attacks is also extremely large compared to other attacks. The number of Internet of Things devices are going to grow by leaps and bounds, and it is necessary to take proactive steps in the network to mitigate such attacks. In this article, the elements of Internet of Things supply chain, motivation behind these attacks, vulnerabilities in the supply chain, and recent attacks are discussed in detail. In order to mitigate the supply chain attacks in Internet of Things environment, preventive measures that can be adopted at various levels are also suggested. These measures can be applied as best practices in any smart network environment against supply chain attacks. © 2021 IEEE.