AMA - Missing puzzle pieces of LoRaWAN Security

[johan (Johan Stokking)]

@tonb

ut does it mean that anyone who sets up his own receivers and a triangulation algorithm can track LoRa nodes without the need to decrypt anything? So the “privacy” of the lora node is compromised?

Yes, that is true. That is indeed my point of the example of parking sensors; there is some information public.

However, it is quite hard to identify individual devices that are moving around. First, it’s very hard to trace geolocation back to an individual device, but not impossible. Second, the end device may rejoin every now and then, so it gets a new DevAddr and resets the frame counter. Also, two or more devices may use the same DevAddr.

Note that this is not very different from triangulating any radio signal.

[johan (Johan Stokking)]

@jacand

Thanks for the overview. I am missing some privacy features in LoRaWAN similar to the randomized addressing in Bluetooth LE, capable of protecting a roaming device (person) against geo-tracking. Is this problem being addressed? Or do everyone just assume that all devices are stationary and that geo-tracking therefore is an irrelevant threat.

It is an important topic. See also my previous comment about this.

Privacy and geolocation is not being addressed explicitly in LoRaWAN. Even though end devices will share the same DevAddr and will rejoin every now and then, without knowing the security context, you will be able to do some level of tracing, with a certain fault rate (DevAddr reuse) and loss rate (new DevAddr). When the device is joining, however, it will emit its mostly static JoinEUI and DevEUI, so yeah, in join mode, the device is very easy to track.

[johan (Johan Stokking)]

Thanks for the questions and thanks for watching the webinar.

I’m going back to developing the V3 Application Server. I’ll check in again later if there are any further questions.

[Tilmans]

So, having an HSM on LoRaWAN nodes/devices is not a requirement from LoRaWAN v1.1 perspective, right? At least, I couldn’t find it explicitly. Not saying it’s not recommended, but such requirements have significant impacts on the development roadmap of LoRaWAN devices.

[johan (Johan Stokking)]

@Tilmans

So, having an HSM on LoRaWAN nodes/devices is not a requirement from LoRaWAN v1.1 perspective, right? At least, I couldn’t find it explicitly. Not saying it’s not recommended, but such requirements have significant impacts on the development roadmap of LoRaWAN devices.

No it’s not required for certification, let alone for compliancy with the specification.

[kersing (Jac Kersing)]

Please do share any information you can. Where will the paper be published?