Introducing the Cyber-Physical Data Flow Diagram to Improve Threat Modelling of Internet of Things Devices

Computer Science > Cryptography and Security [Submitted on 24 Apr 2026] Introducing the Cyber-Physical Data Flow Diagram to Improve Threat Modelling of Internet of Things Devices Simon Liebl, Ian Ferguson, Andreas Aßmuth, Natalie Coull, George R. S. Weir A growing number of Internet of Things (IoT) devices are used across consumer, medical, and industrial domains. They interact with their environment through sensors and actuators and connect to networks such as the Internet. Because sensors may collect sensitive data and actuators can trigger physical actions, security, privacy, and safety are major challenges. Threat modelling can help identify risks, but established IT-focused methods transfer to the IoT only to a limited extent. In this paper, a new modelling technique specifically for IoT devices called Cyber-Physical Data Flow Diagram (CPDFD) is proposed that also allows modelling of hardware with the aim to support manufacturers in identifying threats and developing countermeasures. The technique was examined through an experimental study and a survey with interviews. The results suggest that numerous other attack scenarios can be found through the modelling technique, improving the identification of threats to IoT devices. Comments: 10 pages Subjects: Cryptography and Security (cs.CR) Cite as: arXiv:2604.22307 [cs.CR]   (or arXiv:2604.22307v1 [cs.CR] for this version)   https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2604.22307 Focus to learn more Journal reference: Proc of the First International Conference on Cross-Domain Security in Distributed, Intelligent and Critical Systems (CROSS-SEC 2026), Lisbon, Portugal, pp.~30--39, April 2026 Submission history From: Andreas Aßmuth [view email] [v1] Fri, 24 Apr 2026 07:39:32 UTC (138 KB) Access Paper: HTML (experimental) view license Current browse context: cs.CR < prev   |   next > new | recent | 2026-04 Change to browse by: cs References & Citations NASA ADS Google Scholar Semantic Scholar Export BibTeX Citation Bookmark Bibliographic Tools Bibliographic and Citation Tools Bibliographic Explorer Toggle Bibliographic Explorer (What is the Explorer?) Connected Papers Toggle Connected Papers (What is Connected Papers?) Litmaps Toggle Litmaps (What is Litmaps?) scite.ai Toggle scite Smart Citations (What are Smart Citations?) Code, Data, Media Demos Related Papers About arXivLabs Which authors of this paper are endorsers? | Disable MathJax (What is MathJax?)