Title: Faultload sequences for the MQTT protocol services

Authors: Amina Jandoubi; M.Taha Bennani; Olfa Mosbahi

Addresses: LIPSIC Laboratory, Faculty of Sciences of Tunis, University of Tunis El Manar, Tunis, Tunisia ' LIPSIC Laboratory, Faculty of Sciences of Tunis, University of Tunis El Manar, Tunis, Tunisia ' LIPSIC Laboratory, Faculty of Sciences of Tunis, University of Tunis El Manar, Tunis, Tunisia

Abstract: We have proposed preliminary results of a new approach to extract sequences of events that model the fault-injection times at the MQTT messaging protocol level to assess their reliability. After targeting the publish service, we identified seven possible scenarios that place the system in a faulty state. We introduced new algorithms to (1) extract send and receive events from CFGs, (2) identify send/receive pairs, (3) timestamp the events using a vector clock, (4) filter sending events and (5) generate alternative send sequences. In this paper, we extend the initial results by applying the approach to the services provided by the Publisher, the Subscriber and the MQTT Broker, which increased the number of scenarios up to 17 fault-injection sequences. This contribution is the first step in formalising the description of all possible attacks on the MQTT protocol, which is crucial to reinforce the reliability of its services.

Keywords: faultload model; event-based sequences; MQTT services; message queuing telemetry transport.

DOI: 10.1504/IJIPT.2026.152210

International Journal of Internet Protocol Technology, 2026 Vol.19 No.1, pp.9 - 24

Accepted: 03 Dec 2024
Published online: 11 Mar 2026 *

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