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Introduction

A smart home is a hardware system that enables connection and communication between other devices on the home automation network. These devices include thermostats, light bulbs, wall outlets and switches, door locks, energy monitors, window coverings, appliances, motion sensors, etc. While these devices provide convenient functions to users, such convenience may come at a greater cost, such as the leakage of the user’s private information. With an intelligent hub, all of these smart devices can be controlled using a single app.

The smart home hub is a hardware device that acts as the central point of the smart home system and can sense, process data, and communicate wirelessly.

According to a recent study, on average, 10 smart-home devices were deployed in U.S. houses in 2020. By 2025, nearly 75 billion devices will be installed. The proliferation of smart-home devices is mainly due to the convenience that users can easily access the devices to monitor and control their homes via smartphones and Internet access. However, this convenience comes at a cost. Specifically, the wide use of smart-home devices risks the breach of user privacy. An adversary with information about the usages/states of smart-home devices could obtain sensitive and private information about the users and their activities. i.e., what sensors are triggered or when the sensors are used. These device states often contain the users’ activities in their homes which, in turn, the adversary can use to initiate further offenses, e.g., burglary, with the information. In fact, cybercriminals are increasingly targeting smart-home devices.

This project demonstrates the details of a smart home hub for user privacy and accessibility, enabling an adversary to infer smart home events and user activities by only sniffing encrypted network traffic to/from a target home. More importantly, my insight to design is that users’ activity can routinely trigger smart devices so that an adversary can identify and learn distinct patterns in the network traffic despite being encrypted. The adversary can infer users’ activities in the smart home by analyzing the event-triggered times and distinct patterns in the network traces.

Features of the System

This smart home hub enables you to monitor and control your smart home devices by maintaining security. The following are some important functionality of the project:

• Can monitor the voltage, current, power, energy, frequency, and power factor and alert the user in case of any abnormality.
• Can monitor the temperature, humidity, and air quality of the inside of the house.
• Users can monitor the inside of the house remotely by the connected camera through a smartphone application or web browser.
• Users can monitor the status of any appliance in the house.
• Users can control any connected appliance remotely from the smartphone app or from the web browser.

Watch the Project Demo

Original Source: http://maker.wiznet.io/Taifur/contest/wiznet%2Dpowered%2Dsmart%2Dhome%2Dhub/