Security Threats for Time Synchronization Protocols in the Internet of Things

The Internet of Things (IoT) is an emerging field of application includes several technologies such as the Internet, Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN), Radio Frequency Identification (RFID), and communication technology which build a system that connects real and digital worlds. For the consistent working of the IoT ecosystem, the backbone WSN needs time synchronization. In the IoT ecosystem, the sensors are generally located in an unattended environment where may be a high chance of the existence of malicious nodes. In such a scenario, the time synchronization protocols will behave incorrectly which in turn will hamper the normal working of other dependent protocols. This chapter contributes a thorough insight into the possible threats to time synchronization in backbone WSN of IoT, existing security measures with qualitative and quantitative analysis, and their scope and limitations. This will further help the research community to develop light-weight and efficient secured time synchronization protocols for IoT.