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The emerging connected, low-cost, and easy-to-use air quality monitoring systems have enabled a paradigm shift in the field of air pollution monitoring. These systems are increasingly being used by local government and non-profit organizations to inform the public, and to support decision making related to air quality. However, data integrity and system security are rarely considered during the design and deployment of such monitoring systems, and such ignorance leaves tremendous room for undesired and damaging cyber intrusions. The collected measurement data, if polluted, could misinform the public and mislead policy makers. In this paper, we demonstrate such issues by using a.com, a popular low-cost air quality monitoring system that provides an affordable and continuous air quality monitoring capability to broad communities. To protect the air quality monitoring network under this investigation, we denote the company of interest as a.com. Through a series of probing, we are able to identify multiple security vulnerabilities in the system, including unencrypted message communication, incompetent authentication mechanisms, and lack of data integrity verification. By exploiting these vulnerabilities, we have the ability of “impersonating” any victim sensor in the a.com system and polluting its data using fabricated data. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first security analysis of low-cost and connected air quality monitoring systems. Our results highlight the urgent need in improving the security and data integrity design in these systems.
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Design and Development of a Low Cost Coastal Environment Monitoring System
As human industrial technology advances, coastal communities face threats from both nature and industry. Rising tropical storms and sea levels lead to disruptive floods, endangering residents, industries, and vital infrastructure. While economic benefits come from new industrial facilities, expanded shipping, and water desalination, they also bring increased emissions, habitat destruction, and altered hydrology, harming air, water, and land resources. To be able to effectively and affordably monitor the air and water quality in coastal communities is vital. In this paper, we present an environmental monitoring system for coastal communities with low-cost sensors and capabilities to integrate and present data from multiple sources. The sensing system, powered by regenerative and city electricity sources, uses LoRa Wanto wirelessly transmit seawater and air quality data to LoRaWAN gateways, where it will be further forwarded to a server system for storage, analysis, and visualization. A proof of concept monitoring system is deployed in a coastal community in Texas. We present some of the data gathered and provide analysis on the cost benefits.
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- Award ID(s):
- 2231557
- PAR ID:
- 10626928
- Publisher / Repository:
- IEEE
- Date Published:
- ISBN:
- 979-8-3503-7364-6
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- 65 to 70
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Location:
- Jinzhou, China
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
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Accepted Manuscript1.0
- Conference Paper:
- https://doi.org/10.1109/ICSECE61636.2024.10729546
