Home-network threats and access controls

Abstract

This paper describes major risks, threats and attacks on home networks in general, and UPnP™ home networks in particular. Also considered are the strengths and weaknesses of technologies used to protect home-network and personal devices. The authors describe the effort to address these issues with a new security service for UPnP Device Control Protocols, called "UPnP Device Protection," which features a three-tier authorization policy, peer-to-peer design, an industry-standard pairing mechanism based on WiFi Protected Setup, and a gossip protocol. The paper also considers some future issues such as the need for a richer policy infrastructure on home networks. © 2011 Springer-Verlag.