Poster: Protecting Remote Controlling Apps of Smart-Home-Oriented IOT Devices

Smart home systems rely on cloud servers and multiple IOT (Internet Of Things) devices such as smart thermometers, video monitors, and smart appliances to realize convenient remote home control and monitoring. As smart home systems get more and more popular recently, the security protection of smart home systems has become an important problem. Among the components of a smart home system, the remote controlling mobile app is often the most vulnerable part as it is directly exposed to the public network. In this paper, we propose a novel tool, HomeGuard, to detect potential vulnerabilities in remote controlling apps of smart home system. Specifically, HomeGuard first identifies information flows related to sensitive control and data messages, and then checks where such information flows to and whether they are properly encrypted.