Security Analysis of IoT-based Remote Labs

Remote labs are online laboratories that allow users to access and interact with experimental hardware setups remotely. They are helpful in providing practical learning experiences of theoretical concepts from anywhere in the world with an internet connection. Ensuring the security of these remote labs is essential for protecting the confidentiality, integrity, and availability (CIA) of data and services. This paper presents a comprehensive security analysis of the hardware, communication interfaces, and platform of the IoT-based Remote Labs (RLabs) deployed at IIIT Hyderabad, India. A detailed vulnerability assessment of potential threats was conducted using industry-standard tools and performed four targeted attacks to exploit identified weaknesses. The attacks include remote physical hardware manipulation, creating unavailability of experiments for legitimate users, unauthorized access to the platform and data sniffing between the components. To address these vulnerabilities, mitigation strategies are proposed to enhance the user experience in remote labs.