Opacity in Internet of Things with Cloud Computing

Internet of Things (IoT) with Cloud Computing (CC) is a new paradigm incorporating a pervasive presence of a wide range of things/objects which can interact with each other and cooperate, creating new services and reaching common goals. This will lead to more intelligent smart environments in a wide range of applications. In this context, protecting the Internet of Things with Cloud Computing (IoTwCC) against interference, including service attacks and viruses, becomes paramount. In this paper, we introduce a transition system representation to capture the information flow in IoTwCCs, and then investigate the opacity of the information flow model. In addition, we introduce a threat model to describe the actions of the system, and propose entropy as a security metrics to quantify the amount of information related to a service that might be exposed to other users or adversaries. It turns out that the opacity of the system is affected by the availability of the services. As a result, the trade-off between opacity and service availability can be analyzed.