A Castle of Glass: Leaky IoT Appliances in Modern Smart Homes

The ubiquity of 802.11 WiFi and the miniaturization as a result of Moore's law has recently enabled the success of IoT. From smart lightbulbs to smart toasters, many home appliances are now becoming both Internet-enabled and interconnected through WiFi. Soon, these futuristic smart homes will be able to run themselves, allowing the human operators to be fully in control of their homes - or will they? Despite the physical advancements made since the '90s, the same cannot be said of the vulnerabilities of these smart devices. We analyze a set of common smart home appliances - a lightbulb, power switch, motion sensor, security camera, and home assistant - putting their vulnerabilities to the test to see what a 21st century home intruder could discover.