smart homes

That is a Wrap On Computing 2020

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As a follow-up to my previous blog post, I can say that it was an honor to participate yesterday and on Thursday at the Computing Conference 2020.  It was very well organized, professionally executed, and fun!

There was a wide range of presenters coming from different research areas covering computing, AI, security, IoT, and much more. It was also cool to have a Mindfulness and Yoga general session at the conference. This was something unique!

Here, is a screenshot of my presentation with feedback received. Also, I got private messages for collaboration work and I truly appreciate those!

My Presentation

My presentation with feedback received.

Once again thanks for the thumbs up and already looking forward to next year’s edition!

Talking about DoS Attacks at the Computing Conference

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On Friday, 17 July 2020, I will be talking at the Computing Conference 2020. This conference going was going to be held in London but due to the COVID-19 pandemic, it is now going to be held fully online. I am especially excited to listen to the keynote of Vinton G. Cerf. He is widely known as a “father of the Internet”. Cerf is also the vice president and Chief Internet Evangelist for Google.  During the conference, I will be talking about Denial of Service (DoS) attacks and how commercial devices are prone to severe forms of this attack.

DoS is a widely used attack vector by various malicious threat agents from hackers to nation-states. Its consequences range from a nuisance to loss of revenues to even loss of life. Think about for instance the effects of disabling medical devices such as pacemakers, drones and weapon systems, connected alarm systems, and so on. In the case of smart homes, DoS may be the first attack to remove a component from a network to exploit a vulnerability.  In our study, we found devices manufactured by established commercial players prone especially to HTTP GET DoS attacks. This can result in the complete shutdown of the device, possibly remotely, by using a simple exploit with code available over the Internet.

DoS attacks targeting the smart connected home.

Take a look at the conference agenda and have a read of my conference paper. I will be uploading my presentation slides after the conference is held under my Presentations tab.

Feel free to drop me a message or get in touch if you want to know more about this topic or in case you are interested in information security.

Weak risk awareness of our connected homes

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Traditionally, only a handful of household devices were connected to the Internet. Nowadays, we have everyday devices ranging from toasters, lightbulbs, TVs all connected to the Internet and with the possibly of being remotely controlled.  These devices often go by the name of Internet of Things or smart home devices. While these networked devices bring added convenience, efficiency, and peace of mind, they also bring unique perils to the smart home residents.

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The more smart devices are connected to the home’s network, the more can go wrong. Malicious threat agents such as hackers can reprogram the devices to attack others, vendors can collect fine-grained information on your activities and behaviours, or your devices could become infected with malware possibly preventing you from entering your home or adjusting the temperature to your liking. Many of the manufacturers making these devices have shallow experience with information security and see security and privacy as a burden. As a result, many of the devices available in the market have little or no security backed into them. For example, some devices come with default passwords that are easily retrieved on the Internet, or they cannot be easily updated or reconfigured in a more secure or privacy-preserving way.

In August 2018, I was interviewed by Malmö University on a similar topic.  The interview was transcribed in Swedish but now you can read the full interview in English at the following link: http://iotap.mau.se/weak-risk-awareness-connected-homes/

Talk about my Research Topics at Vetenskapens Dag

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Today, I was invited to speak about my research topics at Vetenskapens Dag (Science Day).  Here, I did a short talk to IT and Economics students in Malmö University where I touched on the following topics:

  • What is a smart connected home?
  • Why it is important to study smart homes?
  • What data are being collected by connected devices?
  • What risks to security and privacy are introduced by such IoT devices?
  • Who are the threat agents interested in gaining a foothold in our lives?
  • What can we do as consumers to protect ourselves?

Below is a screenshot of my presentation cover:

Please feel free to get in touch if you want to know more about this and related!

My Licentiate Seminar

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On Monday, 03 September, I have my licentiate seminar at Malmö University.  On that day, I will give a presentation, where I will talk for about 40 minutes about the smart connected home ecosystem.

Here, I will emphasize the security and privacy risks such as an Internet of Things system bring to the smart home residents, threat agents interested in conducting attacks on the home,  challenges in implementing effective mitigations, and more.

This talk is essentially a summary highlighting key parts of my licentiate thesis (see picture of it below):

The full thesis is 192 pages long with a word count of about 48,000 words.

Take a look at my thesis and upcoming seminar by following the link: http://iotap.mah.se/smart-connected-homes-joseph-bugeja/