Chapter 2. Vulnerabilities, Attacks, and Countermeasures

This chapter elaborates on attack methods against IoT implementations and deployments, how attacks are organized into attack trees, and how IoT cyber-physical systems complicate the threat landscape. We then rationalize a systematic methodology for incorporating countermeasures to secure the IoT. We will explore both typical and unique vulnerabilities seen within various layers of the IoT technology stack and describe new ways in which electronic and physical threats interact. We provide a tailored approach to threat modeling to show the reader how to perform usable IoT threat modeling in their own organizations.

We explore vulnerabilities, attacks, and countermeasures, and methods of managing them through the following chapter subsections:

• Primer on threats, vulnerability, and risk
• Primer on attacks and countermeasures
• Today's IoT attacks
• Lessons learned—the use of systematic approaches