Securing Digital Twins: Lightweight Protocol Vulnerabilities and Mitigation Strategies

Today's ecosystems based on Digital Twins (DTs) enable real-time connectivity and synchronization across all domains- Industry 4.0, the Internet of Things, and smart cities-between physical and digital entities. Their operation requires lightweight and secure protocols for effective communication. Among them, three major lightweight communication protocols are Message Queuing Telemetry Transport (MQTT), Constrained Application Protocol (CoAP), and Advanced Message Queuing Protocol (AMQP), which differ in terms of efficiency, scalability, and security. This work provides a thorough security-centric assessment of these protocols, with regard to vulnerabilities and the potential impacts of attacks on Digital Twin systems. Through specific analysis on threats like Man-in-the-middle (MITM) attack, Denial-of-service (DoS), and data tampering. Here, we compare and contrast the strengths and weaknesses of these protocols, focusing on the weaknesses that may impact Digital Twin operations. In this study, we propose various mitigation strategies for different types of attacks to help secure Digital Twins when using these protocols with IoT-enabled devices.