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A trust model for popular smart home devices

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Abstract

Nowadays, smart home devices like Amazon Echo and Google Home have reached mainstream popularity. Being in the homes of users, these devices are intrinsically intrusive, being able to access details such as users’ name, gender, home address, calendar appointments and others. There are growing concerns about indiscriminate data collection and invasion of user privacy in smart home devices, but studies show that perceived benefits are exceeding perceived risks when it comes to consumers. As a result, consumers are placing a lot of trust in these devices, sometimes without realizing it. Improper trust assumptions and security controls can lead to unauthorized access and control of the devices, which can result in serious consequences. In this paper, we explore the behaviour of devices such as Amazon Echo and Google Home in a smart home setting with respect to trust relationships and propose a trust model to improve these relationships among all the involved actors. We have evaluated how trust was built and managed from the initial set-up phase to the normal operation phase, during which 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 potential relevant security issues. In order to address the identified issues, we defined a trust model and propose a solution based on it for further securing smart home systems.

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Notes

  1. https://www.statista.com/page/compass.

  2. https://www.canalys.com/.

  3. https://www.alexa.com/.

  4. https://store.google.com/es/product/google_home_mini.

  5. https://mobileecosystemforum.com/programmes/analytics/iot-report-2016/.

  6. https://newsroom.cisco.com/press-release-content?type=webcontent&articleId=1900060.

  7. https://www.wireshark.org/.

  8. https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.amazon.dee.app&hl=it

  9. https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.google.android.apps.chromecast.app&hl=it

  10. https://play.google.com/store.

  11. https://zigbeealliance.org/.

  12. https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.philips.lighting.hue2.

  13. https://www.spotify.com.

  14. https://www.which.co.uk/reviews/smart-home-hubs/article/smart-hubs-explained/google-assistant-and-alexa-commands.

  15. https://www.bbc.com/.

  16. https://support.google.com/googlenest/answer/7177221?hl=en.

  17. https://support.google.com/googlenest/answer/7177221?hl=en.

  18. https://support.google.com/googlenest/answer/9155535.

  19. https://www.pcmag.com/feature/363112/how-to-let-multiple-people-use-the-same-amazon-echo/1.

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Acknowledgements

This work has been supported by the EU project H2020-MSCA-RISE-2017 under grant agreement No. 777996 (Sealed-GRID) and the EU H2020-SU-ICT-03-2018 Project No. 830929 CyberSec4Europe (cybersec4europe.eu). This work reflects only the authors view, and the Research Executive Agency is not responsible for any use that may be made of the information it contains.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Network, Information and Computer Security Lab, University of Malaga, 29071, Malaga, Spain

    Davide Ferraris & Carmen Fernandez-Gago

  2. British Telecom, Adastral Park, Ipswich, IP5 3RE, UK

    Daniel Bastos & Fadi El-Moussa

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  1. Davide Ferraris
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  2. Daniel Bastos
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  3. Carmen Fernandez-Gago
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  4. Fadi El-Moussa
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Correspondence to Davide Ferraris.

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Ferraris, D., Bastos, D., Fernandez-Gago, C. et al. A trust model for popular smart home devices. Int. J. Inf. Secur. 20, 571–587 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10207-020-00519-2

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