Talos a Platform for Processing Encrypted IoT Data

Abstract

Internet of Things (IoT) applications today often utilize the cloud to provide storage and ubiquitous access to collected data. Leaving such granular, sensitive, and personal data unprotected on the cloud and vulnerable to system breaches or curious administrators is critical. In this extended abstract, we present Talos [3], a framework that embraces the computational resources available in the cloud and exploits them for encrypted data processing (e.g., using partially homomorphic encryption schemes). We have developed Talos further to enable encrypted data sharing, such that users can securely share their homomorphically encrypted data with add-on services and other users. We demonstrate a prototype implementation of a real-world application utilizing Talos. Talos enables applications to efficiently store and interact with encrypted sensory data in the cloud. With our prototype application, we show that with Talos in place the user experience remains unchanged (i.e., response time below 1 s) although all operations over data in the cloud incorporate encrypted data processing. Moreover, we demonstrate how Talos can be smoothly integrated into IoT apps (currently supporting Contiki and Android). Hence, we hope to encourage the development of secure IoT applications on top of the Talos framework.