David and Goliath: Asymmetric Advantage in MIoT

Abstract

Modern battlefields are experiencing an increased dependency on smart devices that can sense, process, and communicate data, also known as the Military Internet of Things (MIoT) architecture. While MIoT supports and enhances situation awareness, it opens up new cyber attacks that, when properly designed and deployed, can affect the safety of military operators.In this work, we discuss the trade-off between two opposite phenomena caused by the massive deployment of MIoT in modern battlefields: situational awareness and asymmetric advantage. We highlight how a resource-constrained adversary can resort to simple and effective tactics to deploy cyber attacks that can have either short-term effects or be detrimental to strategic military objectives.