For my second project of the unit, I am looking at the surveillance of the smart home. How are IoT devices such as smart speakers, smart TVs, smart lighting systems and cameras acting in our network environments? The majority of users connect these devices to their home networks and don't give it a second thought, whilst devices sit on countertops producing endless streams of communication sent all around the world.
The first piece of research I conducted was scanning my own IoT devices in my network. I used Princeton Universities IoT inspectors tool. This is a research tool allowing you to see in great detail how devices are acting, who they are communicating with.
I collected 24 hours worth of data from my home network. Data was retrieved from devices such as; Google Home smart speakers, smart displays, Google Chromcast, Philips Hue lighting, Nest cameras, Swann Security DVR system and a smart TV box. I was then able to download all the collected data from the IoT inspector tool and analyse it.
Some interesting results I got was from the Swann Security system. The system was communicating with servers located in China, Taiwan, and 'The Republic of Korea' and many, many more. There were also ad trackers which were really unusual. Why would there be multiple ad trackers for a system where you can only see live camera feeds? Nonetheless, I was left with so many questions after reviewing my collected data. I know had to think about what I wanted to do with this data.
For my first project, I explore unsecured CCTV cameras and exposed them. I want to go in the same direction with this project, exposing IoT surveillance. Just like how I exposed unsecured CCTV to owners, who then took immediate action. What if I could make a tool which exposed the data I retrieved in real-time to a user who owns these IoT devices? Could this then affect their decisions to buy and connect them to their smart home? I feel this would be an interesting outcome to achieve.
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