Updating IoT devices: challenges and potential approaches

The deployment of IoT devices is fostering the realization of an increasingly digital society. However, the features of such devices make them attractive targets for potential attackers. Indeed, each device will have to deal with new vulnerabilities and attacks during its lifecycle. Therefore, defining a secure mechanism for software/firmware updates is essential to guarantee the security of IoT devices. Although different approaches have been proposed in recent years, currently there is a lack of comprehensive approaches to address different requirements, such as scalability, efficiency, or management of versions and dependencies. In this work, we describe a set of challenges and analyze the current landscape of solutions for software/firmware updates in IoT devices. In particular, we focus our analysis on the IETF SUIT working group, as well as blockchain-based solutions, which have attracted a significant interest recently.