"Is your Smart Home a Secure Home?" - Analysis of Smart Home Breaches and an Approach for Vulnerability Analysis and Device Isolation

Abstract

Smart devices are becoming quite popular and many homes all around the world have started using such devices. Smart devices are used for various purposes: home security, entertainment, news, streaming, HVAC, medical healthcare, etc. The cost of these devices vary according to their functionality, brand and configuration. However, there is one thing that is common among these devices in a home setting, that is, all these devices are connected to the home’s Wi-Fi network. This could mean that if a security vulnerability exists in even one of the devices in a smart home setting especially in a smart medical home, it could lead to serious repercussions. Current state-of-the-art solution to this problem is to purchase vulnerability scanning software or to deploy packet sniffing network-based tools. The drawback is that those tools can be expensive and on the other hand, most people are unaware of the existence of security threats which could arise from vulnerabilities that exist in smart home devices. In this work, we aim to explore the existence of vulnerabilities in an experimental smart home setting using various connected devices and to propose a set of solutions to isolate vulnerable devices in order to secure the smart home.