MPD: Moving Target Defense Through Communication Protocol Dialects

Communication protocol security is among the most significant challenges of Internet Things (IoT) due to wide variety hardware and software technologies involved. Moving target defense (MTD) has been adopted as an innovative strategy solve this problem by dynamically changing system properties configurations obfuscate attack surface. Nevertheless, existing work MTD primarily focuses on lower-level (e.g., IP addresses or port numbers), only a limited number variations can be generated based these properties. In paper, we propose new approach through communication dialects (MPD) - which customizes into various leverages them create moving defense. Specifically, MPD harnesses dialect generating function then mapping select one specific for each packet during communication. To keep different network entities in synchronization, also design self-synchronization mechanism utilizing pseudo-random generator with input pre-shared secret key previously sent packets. We implement prototype evaluate its feasibility standard (i.e., File Transfer Protocol) internet things Message Queuing Telemetry Transport). The results indicate that effectively address attacks including denial service malicious modifications negligible overhead.