Making IoT Devices Safer

The IoT industry has become an increasingly attractive target for hackers. As more IoT devices with varying security safeguards enter the market, the threat of major security flaws increases. Additionally, most IoT security solutions largely ignore the device’s physical environment, even though most devices are explicitly designed to interact with their environment, such as light sensors, cameras, and door locks.

To make these devices safer, we developed a network middlebox security system called PAC3S. PAC3S effectively secures individual IoT devices regardless of their individual security properties and models the IoT system to evolve with network traffic. This allows PAC3S to make security decisions with additional environmental information, and also allows PAC3S to model indirect interactions between devices. When an attack is detected, PAC3S can shut down the attacker’s connection and prevent malicious commands from reaching IoT devices.