EclipseIoT: A secure and adaptive hub for the Internet of Things

With the proliferation in the quantity and types of devices that may be included in an Internet of Things (IoT) ecosystem, particularly in the context of a smart home, it is essential to provide mechanisms to deal with the heterogeneity which such devices encompass. Variations can occur in data formats, frequency of operation, or type of communication protocols supported. The ability to support integration between sensors using a “hub” has become central to address many of these issues. The implementation of such a hub can provide both the ability to act as an aggregator for various sensors, and also limit an attacker's visibility into locally provisioned sensing capability. This paper introduces EclipseIoT, an adaptive hub which uses dynamically loadable add-on modules to communicate with diverse IoT devices, provides policy-based access control, limits exposure of local IoT devices through cloaking, and offers a canary-function based capability to monitor attack behaviours. Its architecture and implementation are discussed, along with its use within a smart home testbed consisting of commercially available devices such as Phillips Hue Bridge, Samsung Smart Things Hub, TP-Link Smart Plug, and TP-Link Smart Camera. The effectiveness of EclipseIoT is further evaluated by simulating various attacks such as Address Resolution Protocol (ARP) spoofing, Media Access Control (MAC) address spoofing, Man-In-The-Middle (MITM), port scanning, capturing handshakes, sniffing, and Denial of Service (DoS). It is demonstrated that direct attacks upon EclipseIoT components are mitigated due to the security techniques being used.