Authentication and Authorization Modules for Open Messaging Interface (O-MI)

Abstract

With the constant rise of new technology, developments in the fields of computer science, wireless networks, storage capabilities and sensing possibilities along with the demand for continuous connectivity have lead to the formation of the Internet of Things (IoT) concept.

Today, there are numerous organizations working on the IoT technology aimed at developing smart products and services. Each company proposes its own methods directed for a particular field of industry thus, it ends up with having several protocols. This has poorly followed the concept of a unified system. The Open Group attempted to address this issue by proposing Open Messaging Interface (O-MI) and Open Data Format (O-DF) protocols and claimed O-MI to be an IoT messaging standard as that of HTTP for world-wide-web (WWW).

The proposed protocols have been designed to ensure robust development, data standardization, and required security level. However, the security model needs to be upgraded with the recent security techniques. This thesis attempts to specify appropriate authentication and authorization (access control) mechanisms that manage various consumers and provide functionalities that fit into O-MI/O-DF standards. The thesis first discusses several challenges regarding IoT security and then different authentication and authorization techniques available today. It then describes in detail the design decisions and implementation technicalities of the autonomous services created for the reference implementation of O-MI and O-DF.