Who Let the Smart Toaster Hack the House? An Investigation into the Security Vulnerabilities of Consumer IoT Devices

Abstract: For smart homes to be safe homes, they must be designed with security in mind. Yet, despite the widespread proliferation of connected digital technologies in the home environment, there is a lack of research evaluating the security vulnerabilities and potential risks present within these systems. Our research presents a comprehensive methodology for conducting systematic IoT security attacks, intercepting network traffic and evaluating the security risks of smart home devices. We perform hundreds of automated experiments using 11 popular commercial IoT devices when deployed in a testbed, exposed to a series of real deployed attacks (flooding, port scanning and OS scanning). Our findings indicate that these devices are vulnerable to security attacks and our results are relevant to the security research community, device engineers and the users who rely on these technologies in their daily lives.