A Secure Multi-Protocol IoT Framework: Design, Implementation and Cyber Threat Analysis in Smart Agriculture applications

In the past decades, since the introduction of the Internet of Things (IoT) paradigm, the number of connected devices has grown exponentially. These applications now dominate our everyday life across multiple domains, such as smart homes, healthcare or industrial automation. This growth has proceeded hand in hand with the development of various protocols to support different requirements. However, this technological variety introduces significant architectural fragmentation, which may limit interoperability. The nature of some IoT applications has raised significant security and privacy concerns, especially with regard to sensitive data or critical infrastructures, where a lack of security measures and cyber-attacks could have severe consequences. Therefore, a risk analysis is essential to identify vulnerabilities and design defence effective strategies. In this thesis, we present a multi-protocol IoT framework designed to address the challenge of protocol fragmentation by providing a unified, protected communication environment. The work focuses on the design, implementation and security analysis of the two most widely adopted IoT protocols: MQTT and CoAP. This framework is applied to the specific use case of smart agriculture, with a focus on monitored and automated greenhouses. The core of the study involves addressing potential cyber threats by implementing appropriate security mechanisms, such as authentication, authorization and encryption, to mitigate risks without compromising the efficiency required by agricultural sensors. The work demonstrates the challenges of integrating heterogeneous IoT protocols within a secure framework, highlighting the importance of addressing both interoperability and security. This project was carried out during the internship at M31 S.r.l., an IoT solutions company based in Padova.