Security challenges of Internet of Underwater Things : a
systematic literature review

Yisa, AG; Dargahi, T; Belguith, S; Hammoudeh, M

Abstract

Water covers approximately 71% of the earth surface, yet much of the underwater world remains unexplored due to technology limitations. Internet of Underwater
Things (IoUT) is a network of underwater objects that enables monitoring subsea environment remotely. Underwater Wireless Sensor Network (UWSN) is the
main enabling technology for IoUT. UWSNs are characterised by the limitations
of the underlying acoustic communication medium, high energy consumption, lack
of hardware resources to implement computationally intensive tasks and dynamic
network topology due to node mobility. These characteristics render UNWSNs vulnerable to different attacks, such as Wormhole, Sybil, flooding, jamming, spoofing
and Denial of Service (DoS) attacks. This article reviews peer-reviewed literature
that addresses the security challenges and attacks on UWSNs as well as possible
mitigative solutions. Findings show that the biggest contributing factors to security threats in UWSNs are the limited energy supply, the limited communication
medium and the harsh underwater communication conditions. Researchers in this
field agree that the security measures of terrestrial wireless sensor networks are not
directly applicable to UWSNs due to the unique nature of the underwater environment where resource management becomes a significant challenge. This article also
outlines future research directions on security and privacy challenges of IoUT and
UWSN.

Citation

systematic literature review. Transactions on Emerging Telecommunications Technologies, 32(3), e4203. https://doi.org/10.1002/ett.4203

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Dec 8, 2020
• Online Publication Date: Dec 25, 2020
• Publication Date: Mar 15, 2021
• Deposit Date: Dec 10, 2020
• Publicly Available Date: Dec 25, 2021
• Journal: Transactions on Emerging Telecommunications Technologies
• Publisher: Wiley
• Volume: 32
• Issue: 3
• Pages: e4203
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1002/ett.4203
• Publisher URL: https://doi.org/10.1002/ett.4203
• Related Public URLs: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/21613915
• Additional Information: Access Information : This is the peer reviewed version of the following article: Yisa, AG, Dargahi, T, Belguith, S, Hammoudeh, M. Security challenges of Internet of Underwater Things: A systematic literature review. Trans Emerging Tel Tech. 2021; 32:e4203., which has been published in final form at https://doi.org/10.1002/ett.4203. This article may be used for non-commercial purposes in accordance with Wiley Terms and Conditions for Use of Self-Archived Versions.