MITRE Announces Winner of Internet of Things (IoT) Challenge

#Discussion(Security) [ via IoTForIndiaGroup ]

MITRE’s Unique Identification of IoT Devices Challenge aims to provide a way to separate malicious “things” from legitimate devices which are functioning properly — a small but important step in tackling IoT
security.
MITRE created the IoT Challenge, which attracted 130 teams worldwide, to identify innovative ideas for addressing a key security issue inherent in IoT networks—identifying the devices on the network and knowing when changes occur.

A team from Georgia has won the MITRE Unique Identification of Things (IoT) Challenge. Team 0xDEADBEEF, led by Duncan Thompson, won $50,000 by posting the highest score in the competition.
The two runner up teams are: Pulzze Systems, a start-up company from Silicon Valley, and Tietronix, a small company located in Houston. Both work in the IoT field.
“The top three teams had different approaches to solving the problem, which is what we hoped would happen,” said Jeff Schwefler, who created and led the Challenge. “These teams are willing to share their knowledge with MITRE’s government sponsors at an event to be held in the spring.
“The Challenge showed that there is no one answer to the problem of IoT security. There’s still a lot more work to be done in this area. What we’ve learned already has helped reveal the gaps in our knowledge and where we need to do additional work to identify devices in a real-world network.”
Schwefler led a team of MITRE subject matter experts and interns to create the core of the Challenge, setting up a model home network that included a large number of IoT devices, such as door locks, thermostats, and lighting controls. They re-created a home setting because of the wide availability of affordable devices and because a solution that works in the home could be adapted to other network environments, such as a hospital or military facility.
Each registered team was given access to radio frequency (RF) capture data from the model home network. The first recording was a baseline RF capture of the environment. The second recording was a “challenge” RF recording in which IoT devices were added, removed, or modified. Each team needed to answer a series of questions about the baseline and challenge recordings, which allowed MITRE to assess the team’s ability to uniquely identify devices.

Read More..