Privacy Breaches through Cyber Vulnerabilities
S.U. Aswathy, Amit Kumar Tyagi
Abstract
Human beings today have moved towards using smart devices to perform their daily tasks. Currently, smart devices are getting cheaper and cheaper, and are compatible with almost any application, such as smart home automation, smart vehicles, smart grid, e-healthcare devices. To date, approximately 2 billion smart devices have been combined with another application to reduce industry workload. This number will rise in the near future and will exceed 25 billion devices by 2030. Dubai will be the first smart city to operate all its services by 2030 through smart devices. The city tops the list when it comes to becoming advanced and dependent on technology (to be a developed country). Yet, everything comes with its own advantages and disadvantages. In our internet-connected artefacts, which are carried out by hackers/malicious users, we are facing many cyber vulnerabilities today. Remember that these smart devices can collect our personal data and (stolen by cyber-threats) share this information with another/third party. This vast volume of information is still at risk and needs adequate protection against any cyber-attack. In other words, the attacker will steal user data and may blackmail the respective user for its advantages. In this smart age, we need to take some preventive measures to save ourselves from such serious problems. We serve the need for outer society in this work and provide a full explanation of “How these services can leak users’ personal information” and also provide a protection mechanism to avoid (internal/external) attacks. “We see that it is a serious matter entirely relying on smart devices; we need to teach our community that.” Independent working structure is better than structure based. In addition, several critical issues, open challenges and potential countermeasures for the future are also addressed with regard to privacy violations via smart devices (or the Internet of Things).