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By the end of this course, it is expected that the students will be able to:
Detailed Course Outline
We are surrounded by embedded computing devices all around us, from smart devices in our homes and offices, to infotainment systems in our cars. As the world moves towards increasing connectivity, it is increasingly common for these devices to be connected to the Internet. This connectivity opens up tremendous opportunities to improve our quality of lives. For example, many homes already have devices such as smart meters and smart thermostats, which can obtain real-time information about both energyprices and weather forecasts from the Internet to ensure that the temperature settings are automatically set to their optimal values. Collectively, these interconnected embedded devices are known as the Internet of Things. A recent study by Gartner has estimated that there will be over 20 billion IoT devices by 2020.
Unfortunately, the connected nature of IoT devices renders them vulnerable to accidental faults and malicious attacks. Because we depend on these devices for our day-to-day activities, their failures can cripple our daily lives, and in some cases, lead to devastating consequences. An example is the failure of the Nest™ thermostat in January 2016 after a routine software upgrade, which literally left many users “in the cold”. Even more importantly, these devices are targets for malicious attackers who want to wreak harm on society for financial gains or for personal ends. Recently, there have been numerous instances of security attacks on smart meters, modern cars, and even on life-critical medical devices such as pacemakers and insulin pumps.
Texts and Bibliography
There is no required textbook for the course. Reading material (mostly published papers) and lecture notes
will be made available through the course website.The following textbooks are recommended:
The format of the course is formal lectures interspersed with seminar presentations and discussions.
Active class participation and seminar presentation and discussions will form part of the assessment.
Assignments will include implementing reliability and security techniques in an IoT System.
The project is an opportunity for hands-on experience in IoT reliability and security research techniques. It involves literature survey, working with different software tools, performing experiments, and writing a report.