# Survey on Security Threats in Agricultural IoT and Smart Farming
## 1 Introduction  
According to the latest research results of the United Nations' Food and Agriculture organization [1], the world will be in need of producing 70% more food in 2050, in comparison with today's production, in order to feed the constantly growing Earth population, estimated to reach almost 10 billion in 2050 [2]. The market size of the smart agriculture sector is also expected to significantly grow in order to address these needs, supported by the anticipated increase in the number of Internet of Things (IoT) devices employed for agricultural purposes [3]. The continuous and rapid digitization at a global level, underpinned by the progress made in Information and Communication Technologies (ICT), is a trend that deeply transforms many market sectors and has created opportunities in several areas of global economies and societies [4]. The agricultural domain has demonstrated a rapid technological growth in recent years by engaging a variety of emerging ICT solutions. Although Agriculture 4.0 is expected to be the new norm, physical threats and risks in this particular domain is a critical factor that may impede their wide-spread acceptability and adoption. Some of these threats remain traditionally the same, throughout the years, such as weather conditions, but others are associated with the vast evolution of the technological solutions. A brief and accurate list of the physical threats in agriculture is provided by [PERSON] et al. [5], whose work assumes the following classifications: (i) climate change impacts and extreme weather effects; (ii) rapid growth of world population, urbanization and aging; (iii) advanced food production systems and impacts in farmlands and farmers; (iv) pests and diseases. The most prominent of the aforementioned physical threats for the agriculture sector throughout the years has been the weather conditions, especially in recent decades due to climate change. In this direction, there are several studies aiming to research and elaborate on this type of threat. According toDevendra [6], the problem of climate change is global and affects both developed and developing countries. The authors of this work distinguish the following main effects of the climate change: (i) Earth will become warmer; (ii) soil moisture will decline because of increased temperatures; and (iii) sea level will continue to rise because of the frost melt down. However, although climate change is a major threat for the agricultural sector, agriculture is responsible for part of the problem too. [PERSON] et al. claim that about 20% of green-house gases originate from agriculture activities [7]. The physical threats will always be one of major and unpredictable risks in agriculture but there is an upward trend in the recent decades to attempt to minimize their impact by engaging new technologies. To this end, the agricultural domain applications are taking advantage of robust and trustworthy connectivity of different types of equipment, Internet of Things (IoT) networks, and cloud computing infrastructures. For example, the development of smart and precision agriculture applications in order to reduce the existing risks and maximize the production efficiency. Those innovations are only some of the notable achievements that have come as a result of the huge growth of ICT capabilities. On the other hand, with the rapid development of ICT, significant threats of different forms that attempt to exploit security-related vulnerabilities arise as well. Particularly, the rapid development and adoption pace of IoT has created not only many technological and market opportunities, but also a significant gap and attack surface in terms of security. Despite the fact that many research efforts have concentrated on designing network security protocols, cryptography solutions and device security, several challenges still remain, especially with respect to data integrity, service trustworthiness and the lack of metrics for device security [4].