An Analysis of Trust in Smart Home Devices

Author (ESR): 
Davide Ferraris (Universidad De Malaga)
Authors: 
Davide Ferraris (ESR3)
Daniel Bastos (ESR11)
Carmen Fernandez-Gago
Fadi El-Moussa
Javier Lopez

In recent times, smart home devices like Amazon Echo and Google Home have reached mainstream popularity. These devices are intrinsically intrusive, being able to access user’s personal information.There are growing concerns about indiscriminate data collection and invasion of user privacy in smart home devices. Improper trust assumptions and security controls can lead to unauthorized access of the devices,which can have severe consequences (i.e. safety risks). In this paper, we analysed the behaviour of smart home devices with respect to trust relationships. We set up a smart home environment to evaluate how trust is built and managed. Then, we performed a number of interaction tests with different types of users (i.e. owner, guests). As a result, we were able to assess the effectiveness of the provided security controls and identify some relevant security issues. To address them, we defined a trust model and proposed a solution based on it for securing smart home devices.

Venue: 
WISA 2019 Workshop, Jeju Island, South Korea
Date: 
Wednesday, August 21, 2019 to Saturday, August 24, 2019