As most in our industry are no doubt well aware, Embedded World 2021 is happening this week. Although this year’s event is virtual instead of in-person as it typically is in Nuremberg, Germany, embedded technology innovators from around the world will be logging-in to participate, and Silicon Labs is no exception.

In fact, Silicon Labs will be sharing our IoT expertise throughout Embedded World 2021, with presentations and papers focused on a variety of topics: the compelling advantages of Wi-SUN mesh technology for smart city utility applications, the most pressing IoT security issues the embedded industry faces today, and how to prevent bad actors from penetrating embedded hardware and software applications.

We’ll also be front and center of an expert panel discussion exploring the latest developments in wireless connectivity solutions for IoT, ranging from interoperability to security and reliability, and provide an outlook towards the future.

Here’s the roster of the Silicon Labs experts presenting this week, what they’ll be presenting, and when. We hope you’ll join us for all of them!

March 3rd:

• Soumya Shyamasundar, IoT smart city product manager, and Abitzen Xavier, senior marketing manager, and Wi-SUN Alliance board member, will present “Wi-SUN – Key to Unlocking Massive IoT.” Wireless Smart Ubiquitous Network (Wi-SUN) is the leading IPv6 sub-GHz mesh technology for smart city and smart utility applications. Wi-SUN brings Smart Ubiquitous Networks to service providers, utilities, municipalities/local government, and other enterprises, by enabling interoperable, multi-service, and secure wireless mesh networks. Wi-SUN can be used for large-scale outdoor IoT wireless communication networks in a wide range of applications covering both line-powered and battery-powered nodes. This presentation aims to illustrate the benefits of Wi-SUN as a technology and discuss solutions to grow Wi-SUN to create smart connected sustainable cities.

March 4th:

• Jakob Buron, IoT senior staff engineer, will present “Analyzing a Real-World Wireless IoT Encryption and Authentication Protocol Using a Threat Modeling Framework.” This presentation analyzes the security properties of the Z-Wave Security2 framework, considering the residential home environment it is designed to operate in. The analysis includes 10 years of experience operating and maintaining real-world secure wireless residential networks. A selection of embedded mitigations techniques will be presented and their effect on selected attacks will also be analyzed. 

• Josh Norem, senior systems engineer, will present “Security is a System Level Problem: a Case Study.” Norem will present two case studies highlighting how the interaction between two function entities can result in non-functional security. The first looks at a cross-discipline issue showing how the function of one group (in this case Product Test Engineering) can unintentionally bypass security processes and render device features such as secure boot or debug port locking ineffective. The second looks at an implementation of secure key storage that when combined with an ECC accelerator cannot store keys securely, despite both blocks being secure when in isolation. These case studies will highlight the importance of conducting comprehensive security analyses and highlight the types of issues that security engineers should be on the lookout for.

• DeWitt Seward, IoT principal engineer, will present “Fuzz Attacks for Embedded Network Devices” and “Sidechannel Analysis in Embedded Devices.” The Fuzz Attacks presentation covers fuzz testing, which is used to find bug bounties for operating systems and web protocols. As more deep embedded devices become connected to the internet, they are subject to the same types of attacks as other internet-connected devices. Fuzz testing can and should be used to effectively harden embedded networking stacks. Seward’s Sidechannel Analysis presentation will demonstrate how easy it can be to extract an AES key using sidechannel in the real world and how to use this to select sidechannel-hardened solutions for future embedded system product developments. As more connected devices are deployed, manufacturers need to make sure their devices are built on secure platforms.

March 5th:

• Anders Pettersson, IoT field marketing director, will participate in an expert panel entitled “Embedded Connectivity in IoT – Quo Vadis.” This panel will explore the latest developments in wireless connectivity solutions for IoT, touching on a range of topics from interoperability to security and reliability, as well as provide an outlook on the future of the incredibly dynamic IoT space.

We hope you’ll join our embedded IoT experts online at Embedded World 2021. For more information on Silicon Labs’ state-of-the-art security solutions, visit silabs.com/security. For more information regarding the advantages of Wi-SUN for smart city mesh networking applications, we encourage you to read our recent guest blog Q&A with Wi-SUN president and CEO Phil Beecher.