Open authorization (OAuth) is an open protocol, which allows secure authorization in a simple and standardized way from third-party applications accessing online services, based on the representational state transfer (REST) web architecture. OAuth has been designed to provide an authorization layer, typically on top of a secure transport layer such as HTTPS. The Internet of Things (IoTs) refers to the interconnection of billions of resource-constrained devices, denoted as smart objects, in an Internet-like structure. Smart objects have limited processing/memory capabilities and operate in challenging environments, such as low-power and lossy networks. IP has been foreseen as the standard communication protocol for smart object interoperability. The Internet engineering task force constrained RESTful environments working group has defined the constrained application protocol (CoAP) as a generic web protocol for RESTful-constrained environments, targeting machine-to-machine applications, which maps to HTTP for integration with the existing web. In this paper, we propose an architecture targeting HTTP/CoAP services to provide an authorization framework, which can be integrated by invoking an external oauth-based authorization service (OAS). The overall architecture is denoted as IoT-OAS. We also present an overview of significant IoT application scenarios. The IoT-OAS architecture is meant to be flexible, highly configurable, and easy to integrate with existing services. Among the advantages achieved by delegating the authorization functionality, IoT scenarios benefit by: 1) lower processing load with respect to solutions, where access control is implemented on the smart object; 2) fine-grained (remote) customization of access policies; and 3) scalability, without the need to operate directly on the device.

The Internet of Things (IoT) aims at connecting billions of devices in an Internet-like structure. This gigantic information exchange enables new opportunities and new forms of interactions among things and people. A crucial enabler of robust applications and easy smart objects' deployment is the availability of mechanisms that minimize (ideally, cancel) the need for external human intervention for configuration and maintenance of deployed objects. These mechanisms must also be scalable, since the number of deployed objects is expected to constantly grow in the next years. In this work, we propose a scalable and self-configuring peer-to-peer (P2P)-based architecture for large-scale IoT networks, aiming at providing automated service and resource discovery mechanisms, which require no human intervention for their configuration. In particular, we focus on both local and global service discovery (SD), showing how the proposed architecture allows the local and global mechanisms to successfully interact, while keeping their mutual independence (from an operational viewpoint). The effectiveness of the proposed architecture is confirmed by experimental results obtained through a real-world deployment.

The Internet of Things (IoT) refers to the Internet-like structure of billions of interconnected constrained devices, denoted as “smart objects”. Smart objects have limited capabilities, in terms of computational power and memory, and might be battery-powered devices, thus raising the need to adopt particularly energy efficient technologies. Among the most notable challenges that building interconnected smart objects brings about, there are standardization and interoperability. The use of IP has been foreseen as the standard for interoperability for smart objects. As billions of smart objects are expected to come to life and IPv4 addresses have eventually reached depletion, IPv6 has been identified as a candidate for smart-object communication. The deployment of the IoT raises many security issues coming from (i) the very nature of smart objects, e.g., the adoption of lightweight cryptographic algorithms, in terms of processing and memory requirements; and (ii) the use of standard protocols, e.g., the need to minimize the amount of data exchanged between nodes. This paper provides a detailed overview of the security challenges related to the deployment of smart objects. Security protocols at network, transport, and application layers are discussed, together with lightweight cryptographic algorithms proposed to be used instead of conventional and demanding ones, in terms of computational resources. Security aspects, such as key distribution and security bootstrapping, and application scenarios, such as secure data aggregation and service authorization, are also discussed.

The Internet of Things (IoT) is of continuously growing interest for research and industry