A Vulnerable-by-Design IoT Sensor Framework for Cybersecurity in Smart Agriculture
Emil Marian Pasca, Daniela Delinschi, Rudolf Erdei, Iulia Băărăian, Oliviu Matei

Abstract. As farms become increasingly connected, the sensors monitoring crops, soil and machinery become prime targets for cyberattacks. This paper proposes a Vulnerable-by-Design IoT Sensor Framework for cybersecurity in smart agriculture. Instead of waiting for real-world attacks to occur, the framework deliberately builds a controlled, containerized testbed that simulates both natural sensor health faults (such as signal dropouts) and active cybersecurity attacks. The framework integrates advanced LSTM (Long Short-Term Memory) neural networks to rigorously test and validate detection capabilities. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed approach enables proactive identification and remediation of vulnerabilities before they can be exploited in real-world smart agriculture deployments.

Keywords: IoT security; vulnerable-by-design; smart agriculture; LSTM; intrusion detection; cybersecurity

Emil Marian Pasca, Daniela Delinschi, Rudolf Erdei, Iulia Băărăian, Oliviu Matei, "A Vulnerable-by-Design IoT Sensor Framework for Cybersecurity in Smart Agriculture", Agriculture (Basel), vol. 15, no. 12, MDPI, 2025, 2023. DOI: https://doi.org/10.3390/agriculture15121253.

Reference: Agriculture (Basel), vol. 15, no. 12, MDPI, 2025. DOI: 10.3390/agriculture15121253

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