Cybersecurity in Smart Homes

7sTiki: A Mutual Authentication Protocol for Constrained Sensor Devices

Corinna SCHMITT¹, Severin SIFFERT² and Burkhard STILLER²

¹Research Insitute CODE, Universität der Bundeswehr München, Neubiberg, Germany

²Communication Systems Group (CSG), Department of Informatics IfI, University of Zürich UZH, Switzerland

Today, a large number of use cases exist for the Internet-of-Things (IoT) and Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN), such as home automation, ambient assisted living, eHealth, and logistics (Romeo 2016). For certain use cases it is desirable to make sensitive data (e.g. medical information or personal address) globally accessible (a) to authorized users only and (b) to data processing units through the Internet. Even seemingly inconspicuous data, such as the energy consumption measured by a smart meter, can lead to potential infringements on the users' privacy, e.g. by allowing an eavesdropper to conclude whether or not a user is currently at home.

From an industry perspective, there is a pressing need for security solutions, especially for the transmission of sensitive data, and access to it has increased. Due to leaks of such information to the public, end-users in the private sector have also demanded security for their data and require privacy support and data ownership rights. From a legal perspective, this is addressed by the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR; Regulation (EU) 2016/679) (European Parliament and Council of the European Union 2016). Regarding ...