How Secure Is Your LoRaWAN IoT Device?

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eetimes.com, Mar. 04, 2020 – 

Low-power wide-area networks (LPWANs) are helping drive the Internet of things (IoT) explosion. They connect millions of low-power IoT and Industrial IoT (IIoT) devices into wireless networks over a range of distances, from short to really, really long, from indoor applications to those covering large fields or even cities. But device designers using the LoRaWAN standard may be lulled into thinking that just configuring its security keys is enough to prevent their devices from being hacked. A new report says it isn't.

Four protocols give enterprises a choice in LPWAN connectivity: cellular NB-IoT, LTE-M, and Sigfox, and the non-cellular LoRaWAN standard. Among these, the open LoRaWAN overwhelmingly dominates. Omdia (formerly IHS Markit – Technology) projects a "quite high forecast" for LoRa, said Lee Ratliff, senior principal analyst, connectivity and IoT.

According to the LoRa Alliance, LoRa is used for M2M communications in over 100 million IoT and IIoT devices in industries such as manufacturing, smart cities, smart utilities, vehicle tracking and healthcare.

But with all this wireless traffic, how secure are the nodes of these networks? Not very, concludes a new white paper from IOActive Research on LoRaWAN implementation. Devices are susceptible to hacking, especially those built with revision 1.0 of the standard, including 1.0.2 and 1.0.3, the majority of deployments so far.

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