A Holistic Curriculum Towards Teaching Smart Home Security

Abstract

Smart homes with various Internet of Things (IoT) devices generate a large amount of network traffic carrying rich information and play an important role in our lives. However, there is a lack of educational material with real case studies to teach undergraduate students smart home security. In this poster paper, we present a holistic curriculum design consisting of five components teaching conceptual understanding of smart home vulnerabilities, capturing and interpreting network traffic for normal and abnormal behaviors of home users and smart devices, and writing reports on smart home security analysis and defense recommendations. A case study on a known vulnerability of Ring doorbell which reveals the password of the smart home Wi-Fi during the initial setup stage is illustrated with the network topology and the captured http traffic. The project is at its initial stage of development by students in a cybersecurity concentration at a primarily undergraduate institution. Students have started collecting and analyzing smart home traffic as a project in the Wireless Network and Security class or through supervised individual undergraduate research studies.