Revisiting Secure Bootstrapping in IoT: TCP/IP Approaches and Opportunities with NDN

• Adriana Viriato Ribeiro UFBA
• André L. R. Madureira UFBA
• Leobino N. Sampaio UFBA

DOI: https://doi.org/10.5753/sbseg.2025.11494

Abstract

Security in IoT applications relies on bootstrapping to establish secure communications between devices and applications. In TCP/IP architectures, the bootstrapping and network configuration processes are decoupled. In contrast, Named-Data Networking (NDN) natively integrates this functionality, simplifying management and ensuring security from the beginning of the connection. In this work, we compare the challenges and methodologies of bootstrapping in IoT, analyzing specificities of TCP/IP and NDN. In addition to the theoretical review, the paper also provides a proof of concept to evaluate the viability of bootstrapping in NDN, considering node ingress time and resource consumption. The results indicate low temporal overhead and bandwidth impact associated with the security bootstrapping steps, although factors such as congestion and packet loss can influence its performance. It was also observed that NDN still relies on TCP/IP security techniques, especially in remote bootstrapping scenarios.

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