Jitheesh V J, Shruti Thiagu and V Harsha Vardhana Anand from B.Tech CSE (IoT), 2nd year – Team “Embedded Wizards” recently participated in the CXO-Innofest 2023 (CIF) Hackathon organised by Cywayz. The hackathon spanned nearly a month, starting from August 17, 2023, to September 12, 2023.Out of the 11 problem statements presented, the team chose to take on an open-ended challenge in the IoT domain. Their project, titled “IoT Fog Security and Auto Remediation”, earned the top position in this category, earning them the top honours and a substantial cash prize of ₹25,000.The project’s primary focus was on implementing security measures in an IoT fog computing environment. It aimed to achieve automatic remediation of IoT nodes in cases where they turned malicious while also establishing data security through blockchain-based cryptographic protocols.

The novelty of the project includes the following:

- A mechanism to ensure data and IoT node security for a fog computing WSN

- IoT node security is ensured by automatically isolating and remediating malicious nodes within the WSN network using a trust model.

- Data security is ensured by a blockchain-based key distribution mechanism.

During the hackathon, the team simulated an IoT wireless sensor network using the Contiki-NG Cooja Simulator. Network packets were captured and forwarded to REST APIs on a web server, representing a cloud domain. The web server also provided a dashboard displaying the network’s status. Additionally, they developed and demonstrated cryptographic protocols for implementation within the wireless sensor network. The team wishes to express their deepest gratitude to Ms. Dhivya S, their mentor, and Dr. S. Vidhusha for their invaluable guidance and support whenever challenges arose throughout the development process.