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The security of Internet-of-Things (IoT) devices in the residential environment is important due to their widespread presence in homes and their sensing and actuation capabilities. However, securing IoT devices is challenging due to their varied designs, deployment longevity, multiple manufacturers, and potentially limited availability of long-term firmware updates. Attackers have exploited this complexity by specifically targeting IoT devices, with some recent high-profile cases affecting millions of devices. In this work, we explore access control mechanisms that tightly constrain access to devices at the residential router, with the goal of precluding access that is inconsistent with legitimate users' goals. Since many residential IoT devices are controlled via applications on smartphones, we combine application sensors on phones with sensors at residential routers to analyze workflows. We construct stateful filters at residential routers that can require user actions within a registered smartphone to enable network access to an IoT device. In doing so, we constrain network packets only to those that are consistent with the user's actions. In our experiments, we successfully identified 100% of malicious traffic while correctly allowing more than 98% of legitimate network traffic. The approach works across device types and manufacturers with straightforward API and state machine construction for each new device workflow.
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This content will become publicly available on April 1, 2026
DB-PAISA: Discovery-Based Privacy-Agile IoT Sensing+Actuation
Internet of Things (IoT) devices are becoming increasingly commonplace in both public and semi-private settings. Currently, most such devices lack mechanisms that allow for their discovery by casual (nearby) users who are not owners or operators. However, these users are potentially being sensed, and/or actuated upon, by these devices, without their knowledge or consent. This triggers privacy, security, and safety issues. To address this problem, some recent work explored device transparency in the IoT ecosystem. The intuitive approach is for each device to periodically and securely broadcast (announce) its presence and capabilities to all nearby users. While effective, when no new users are present, this 𝑃𝑢𝑠ℎ-based approach generates a substantial amount of unnecessary network traffic and needlessly interferes with normal device operation. In this work, we construct DB-PAISA which addresses these issues via a 𝑃𝑢𝑙𝑙-based method, whereby devices reveal their presence and capabilities only upon explicit user request. Each device guarantees a secure timely response (even if fully compromised by malware) based on a small active Root-of-Trust (RoT). DB-PAISA requires no hardware modifications and is suitable for a range of current IoT devices. To demonstrate its feasibility and practicality, we built a fully functional and publicly available prototype. It is implemented atop a commodity MCU (NXP LCP55S69) and operates in tandem with a smartphone-based app. Using this prototype, we evaluate energy consumption and other performance factors.
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- Award ID(s):
- 1956393
- PAR ID:
- 10617395
- Publisher / Repository:
- POPETS
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Proceedings on Privacy Enhancing Technologies
- Volume:
- 2025
- Issue:
- 2
- ISSN:
- 2299-0984
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- 434 to 449
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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