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IoTAthena: Unveiling IoT Device Activities From Network Traffic

Published: 01 January 2022 Publication History

Abstract

The recent spate of cyber attacks towards Internet of Things (IoT) devices in smart homes calls for effective techniques to understand, characterize, and unveil IoT device activities. In this paper, we present a new system, named IoTAthena, to unveil IoT device activities from raw network traffic consisting of timestamped IP packets. IoTAthena characterizes each IoT device activity using an activity signature consisting of an ordered sequence of IP packets with inter-packet time intervals. IoTAthena has two novel polynomial time algorithms, <monospace>sigMatch</monospace> and <monospace>actExtract</monospace>. For any given signature, <monospace>sigMatch</monospace> can capture all matches of the signature in the raw network traffic. Using <monospace>sigMatch</monospace> as a subfunction, <monospace>actExtract</monospace> can accurately unveil the sequence of various IoT device activities from the raw network traffic. Using the network traffic of heterogeneous IoT devices collected at the router of a real-world smart home testbed and a public IoT dataset, we demonstrate that IoTAthena is able to characterize and generate activity signatures of IoT device activities and accurately unveil the sequence of IoT device activities from raw network traffic.

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  • (2024)The SA4P Framework: Sensing and Actuation as a PrivilegeProceedings of the 19th ACM Asia Conference on Computer and Communications Security10.1145/3634737.3657006(873-885)Online publication date: 1-Jul-2024
  • (2024)Root Cause Analysis of Anomaly in Smart Homes Through Device Interaction GraphAdvanced Intelligent Computing Technology and Applications10.1007/978-981-97-5606-3_31(363-374)Online publication date: 5-Aug-2024
  • (2022)IoTMosaic: Inferring User Activities from IoT Network Traffic in Smart HomesIEEE INFOCOM 2022 - IEEE Conference on Computer Communications10.1109/INFOCOM48880.2022.9796908(370-379)Online publication date: 2-May-2022

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      cover image IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications
      IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications  Volume 21, Issue 1
      Jan. 2022
      708 pages

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      IEEE Press

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      Published: 01 January 2022

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      • (2024)The SA4P Framework: Sensing and Actuation as a PrivilegeProceedings of the 19th ACM Asia Conference on Computer and Communications Security10.1145/3634737.3657006(873-885)Online publication date: 1-Jul-2024
      • (2024)Root Cause Analysis of Anomaly in Smart Homes Through Device Interaction GraphAdvanced Intelligent Computing Technology and Applications10.1007/978-981-97-5606-3_31(363-374)Online publication date: 5-Aug-2024
      • (2022)IoTMosaic: Inferring User Activities from IoT Network Traffic in Smart HomesIEEE INFOCOM 2022 - IEEE Conference on Computer Communications10.1109/INFOCOM48880.2022.9796908(370-379)Online publication date: 2-May-2022

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