Quote:Security experts have published a report today warning that the new and fast-rising LoRaWAN technology is vulnerable to cyber-attacks and misconfigurations, despite claims improved security rooted in the protocol's use of two layers of encryption.

LoRaWAN stands for "Long Range Wide Area Network." It is a radio-based technology that works on top of the proprietary LoRa protocol. The LoRa protocol was developed to allow companies to connect battery-powered or other low-powered devices to the internet via a wireless connection. LoRaWAN takes the LoRa protocol and allows devices spread across a large geographical area to wirelessly connect to the internet via radio waves.
 
LoRaWAN is particularly popular with developers of Internet of Things devices. Previously, to connect an IoT or other smart device to the internet, companies had to connect the IoT device to their private internet WiFi network or devices had to ship with a SIM card, allowing the device to use a cellular network to report back to a command server.

LoRaWAN is an alternative to these setups. An IoT device with a LoRaWAN client will broadcast data via radio waves to a nearby LoRaWAN gateway (in most cases, an antenna). The Gateway takes this data and forwards it to an internet server, which then relays the data to an application backend or dashboard.