Wital: A Whitelist-Based IoT Firewall for Mitigating Device Exploitation

IoT devices are susceptible to botnet malware due to inherent system limitations. Once compromised, these devices can be exploited to leak private user information or launch DDoS attacks. In this paper, we present Wital, an adaptable mitigation strategy that curtails the malicious use of IoT devices through a stringent whitelist-based approach. This method combines static manufacturer usage profiling and dynamic traffic monitoring into a client-side firewall. Our strategy ensures that, even if devices are compromised, their impact is minimized. Using the P4 language for programmable data planes, we prototype the firewall solutions and demonstrate that this solution can significantly reduce potential device exploitation.