Experimental evaluation of cybersecurity threats to the smart-home
Arunan Sivanathan, Franco Loi, Hassan Habibi Gharakheili, Vijay Sivaraman · 2017
Consumers are increasingly buying Internet-connected appliances, referred to as the Internet of Things (IoT), for their homes. These IoT devices can collect a lot of data and enable users to manage their smart home environment. However, it can also pose huge risks to consumers privacy and security. A remote intruder who may illegitimately access these devices can obtain information for his gain or harm other entities. This paper aims to experimentally evaluate vulnerabilities of consumer IoT devices against cyber-attacks. We first develop a number of test suites to conduct our evaluation in four categories: confidentiality of data exchanged by IoT devices, integrity and authentication of their communication, their access control and availability, and their capability to reflect DDoS attacks. We then give each IoT device an overall rating (good, average, poor) based on threats we identified in each category. Lastly, we apply our evaluation to four representative households namely home security, health monitoring, energy management, and entertainment which collectively include 17 consumer IoT devices that are available on the market, and illustrate what threats may emerge for each household if IoT devices are compromised.