Empirical Evaluation of Security Mechanisms for Embedded IoT Systems: Verified Results and Performance Benchmarks
This paper presents a rigorous and experimentally grounded analysis of security mechanisms for embedded Internet of Things (IoT) systems, ensuring that all reported findings are directly verified from primary published sources. The study systematically examines six key domains: hardware-rooted secure boot and remote attestation on application-processor-class IoT devices; benchmarking of post-quantum cryptographic algorithms on constrained platforms, highlighting the efficiency of CRYSTALS-Kyber on mid-range hardware and the performance challenges on ultra-constrained devices; evaluation of the NTRU cryptographic scheme on edge IoT nodes; experimental analysis of the Bluetooth Key Negotiation of Bluetooth (KNOB) attack across multiple chipsets and devices; assessment of firmware vulnerability taxonomies along with analysis tools for consumer IoT firmware; and characterization of IoT attack traffic, with a focus on the predominance of network-layer attacks targeting Telnet interfaces. For each domain, the paper details the experimental setup, methodology, validated results, and associated limitations. It also critically addresses inconsistencies in prior literature by identifying and correcting instances where unsupported numerical claims were previously reported. A comprehensive comparative analysis is provided to consolidate all verified findings, offering a reliable and source-consistent perspective on IoT security research.