security systems

Building Practical Security Systems for the Post-app Smart Home

Modern commodity computing platforms such as smartphones (e.g., Android and iOS) and smart home systems (e.g., SmartThings and NEST) provide programmable interfaces for third-party integration, enabling popular third-party functionality that is often manifested in applications, or apps. Thus, for the last decade, designing systems to analyze mobile apps for vulnerabilities or unwanted behavior has been a major research focus within the security community. Leveraging the lessons and techniques learned from mobile app analysis, researchers have developed similar systems to evaluate the security, safety, and privacy of smart homes by inspecting IoT apps developed for platforms such as SmartThings. However, emerging characteristics of smart home ecosystems indicate the need to move away from the approach of IoT app analysis, as IoT apps may not be representative of the home automation in real homes, and moreover, be unavailable for analysis or instrumentation in the near future.