[Cryptography] Simple IoT sensor encryption ?

Andrew Donoho awd at ddg.com
Fri Apr 15 13:26:18 EDT 2016


> On Apr 15, 2016, at 12:05 , Henry Baker <hbaker1 at pipeline.com> wrote:
> 
> Let's take a totally trivial wireless application: a sports heart rate transmitter strap.  (There are lots of other applications, including audio & video, but let's focus on a much simpler, much less resource intensive application to start with.)




Henry,



	If this is a gedanken experiment on how minimal you can make your IoT sensor, then this is a great discussion to have.

	That said, the sports scenario you described is currently being pragmatically solved by Bluetooth LE. For some folks, Bluetooth LE does not provide enough security. Hence, they run secure protocols over both Bluetooth and Wi-Fi. To see this in action, try snooping both an Apple Watch and an Android powered Watch. I’m told that one uses more security on the airwaves than the other.




	Returning to your gedanken experiment, the only thing I think you need to add is a device identifier of some sort. I would imagine a permanent in device random number encrypted along with the sensor data would be sufficient.



Anon,
Andrew
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