T2Pair: Secure and Usable Pairing for Heterogeneous IoT Devices

Abstract

Secure pairing is key to trustworthy deployment and application of Internet of Things (IoT) devices. However, IoT devices lack conventional user interfaces, such as keyboards and displays, which makes many traditional pairing approaches inapplicable. Proximity-based pairing approaches are very usable, but can be exploited by co-located malicious devices. Approaches based on a user's physical operations on IoT devices are more secure, but typically require inertial sensors, while many devices do not satisfy this requirement. A secure and usable pairing approach that can be applied to heterogeneous IoT devices still does not exist. We develop a technique, Universal Operation Sensing, which allows an IoT device to sense the user's physical operations on it without requiring inertial sensors. With this technique, a user holding a smartphone or wearing a wristband can finish pairing in seconds through some very simple operations, e.g., pressing a button or twisting a knob. Moreover, we reveal an inaccuracy issue in original fuzzy commitment and propose faithful fuzzy commitment to resolve it. We design a pairing protocol using faithful fuzzy commitment, and build a prototype system named Touch-to-Pair (T2Pair, for short). The comprehensive evaluation shows that it is secure and usable.