Lightweight Man-In-The-Middle (MITM) Detection and Defense Algorithm for WiFi-Enabled Internet of Things (IoT) Gateways

Man-In-The-Middle (MITM) attack is one of the well-known threats in computer security. With the convergence of smart objects and the Internet (Internet of Things), there has been the need to ensure confidentiality, integrity and availability of information. MITM targets the data flow between endpoints, and the confidentiality and integrity of the data itself. In this paper, we present a lightweight and real-time MITM detection and defense algorithm that can be implemented on WiFi-enabled IoT gateways. The algorithm works for statically assigned host IP addresses and also IP addresses assigned via DHCP. We employed Asynchronous Method Dispatch (AMD) to reduce performance overhead. Subsequently, we evaluated the performance of the algorithm with respect to CPU utilization, detection rate and network latency