Welcome pwn: Almond smart home hub forensics

Many home interactive sensors and networked devices are being branded as “Internet of Things” or IoT devices. Such disparate gadgets often have little in common other than that they all communicate using similar protocols. The emergence of devices known as “smart home hubs” allow for such hardware to be controlled by non-technical users providing inexpensive home security and other home automation functions. To the cyber analyst, these smart environments can be a boon to digital forensics; information such as interactions with the devices, sensors registering motion, temperature or moisture levels in different rooms, all tend to be collected in one central location rather than separate ones. This paper presents the research work conducted on one such smart home hub environment, the Securifi Almond+, and provides guidance for forensic data acquisition and analysis of artefacts pertaining to user interaction across the hub, the iPhone/Android companion applications and the local & cloud-based web interfaces.