Threat Landscape for 6G-Enabled Massive IoT

Over the past few years, we have witnessed global initiatives that have been focused on shaping the vision and research agenda for 6 th Generation (6G) mobile networks, which are expected to surpass the capabilities of 5 th Generation (5G) mobile networks and adequately support the Internet of Everything (IoE) applications. In particular, it is anticipated that 6G mobile networks will truly meet the stringent network performance requirements of the emerging disruptive massive IoT applications that 5G cannot support due to its inherent limitations. 6G mobile networks, expected to be commercially available from 2030 onwards, are envisioned to support a much broader range of applications compared to 5G by interconnecting hundreds of billions of IoT devices. However, the rapid expansion of 6G-enabled IoT devices and the increasing number of their interconnections will heighten the vulnerabilities of the 6G-enabled massive IoT applications and pose significant security and privacy risks. Therefore, this chapter gives a comprehensive overview of representative massive IoT applications envisioned to be deployed in the 6G era to improve people's lives and identifies the threat landscape of these applications. The aim is to shed light on their potential key threats and identify security and privacy issues that should be addressed before the 6G-enabled massive IoT applications build trust among all relevant stakeholders and realize their full potential.