Secure software updates for the smart city

New software vulnerabilities are discovered each day, rendering deployed devices insecure and exposed to attacks. As the number of connected devices is rapidly increasing, and attacks become easier to mount and more sophisticated in nature, devices and systems must support robust and secure means of updating software.

The project will develop procedures and technologies for deploying software updates in large-scale heterogeneous environments, such as the smart city. The smart city consists of several systems, owned and operated by different entities, but may still depend on each other as data is aggregated for analysis.

A demonstrator environment for deploying devices will be developed that is easily reconfigurable and adaptive with respect to new devices and network configurations. This demonstrator will support device provisioning, configuration, monitoring and maintenance and will be based on an existing platform that supports combining devices and services. Disciplinary research related to software security, PKIs based on blockchain technology, trusted computing and DoS mitigation will be conducted and integrated with the demonstrator. We expect to contribute research results that increases security in all kinds of IoT-environments and to have a demonstrator that can be used to test systems and devices, as well as assessing their security.