Botnet and Internet of Things (IoTs): A Definition, Taxonomy, Challenges, and Future Directions

Introduction

In this digital world where everything is connected through the internet, the Internet of Things (IoT) plays a major role. Most of the people get attracted towards this innovative approach which helps the people to enjoy their life in their hectic routine. For instance, just imagine if refrigerators will be able to monitor their content and can place the order to a retailer shop if any food item is running out or imagine if you would be able to order your Sunday breakfast from your bed through a gesture or a voice command like the intelligent assistants Google Assistant, Apple Siri or Amazon Alexa. All these thoughts are not only some science fiction story but is now becoming a reality just because with use of smart devices such as Google Home, Amazon echoes with Alexa, etc., smart television, smart phones, etc. (Engrish, 2017).

In 1999, the concept of IoT was proposed by Kevin Ashton. IoT was refereed as the objects that are interoperable and exclusively identifiable and are connected with radio-frequency identification technology. Though, IoT is defined by in many forms by the various researchers as (Ray, 2018):

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  ‘‘A global infrastructure for the information society enabling advanced services by interconnecting (physical and virtual) things based on, existing and evolving, interoperable information and communication technologies” (ICTP Workshop, 2015).

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  ‘‘3A concept: anytime, anywhere and any media, resulting into sustained ratio between radio and man around 1:1” (Srivastava, 2006).

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  ‘‘a dynamic global network infrastructure with self-configuring capabilities based on standard and interoperable communication protocols where physical and virtual ’Things’ have identities, physical attributes, and virtual personalities and use intelligent interfaces, and are seamlessly integrated into the information network” (Kranenburg, 2008).

Evolution of Internet of Things (IoT)

As shown in Figure 1 that is how the Internet of Things actually evolved with the advent of time. At the era of pre-internet, which is also known as “H2H” or “Human-to-Human” era, people had the fixed or mobile telephony. Except that one of the primary ways of communication was through SMS services. After that with the incorporation of smart networks when the internet came into existence, the “www” or “world wide web” era the communication as well as information and entertainment etc. gets better through the internet. Furthermore, smart IT platforms and services were added to “www” that results in “web 2.0” era that totally converts everything into digital transformation like e-productivity, e-commerce, etc.

Figure 1.

Evolution of IoT

Next era is considered to bean era of “social media” that is Skype, Facebook, YouTube, etc. which involves the smart phones and applications. Moreover, currently, we live in “M2M” or “Machine-to-Machine” era that is possible because of the Internet of Things and with smart devices, objects, and data. Here we can easily identify, trace, monitor things with smart devices as well as automation, actuation and payment are also possible through IoT.