Do you think the traffic from your lights going on or off will even be noticeable compared to all the background activity of apps on your phone checking weather, sports scores, news and social media. ________________________________ From: iotivity-dev-bounces at lists.iotivity.org [iotivity-dev-bounces at lists.iotivity.org] on behalf of Gregg Reynolds [[email protected]] Sent: Thursday, January 12, 2017 6:21 PM To: iotivity-dev at lists.iotivity.org Subject: Re: [dev] randomized notifications?
On Jan 12, 2017 5:05 PM, "Gregg Reynolds" <dev at mobileink.com<mailto:dev at mobileink.com>> wrote: suppose I have a bunch of smart lights, and I observe them. they notify me when they change state from on to off or vice-versa. now suppose my local burglary ring eavesdrops on my stuff. over time they can infer my patterns, even if they cannot crack the DTLS encryption. they see a bunch of traffic when I'm home, nothing when I'm away. pretty soon they have a good idea of whether or not I am at home. this applies to just about everything, not just lights. the obvious way to defeat this is to send notifications randomly. to the attacker they all look the same, but the plaintext message contains some kind of indicator that allows me to distinguish between real and fake messages. I could do this in my app, but I wonder if this would not be better handled farther down in the stack. should it be a feature of the protocol? has it already been addressed somehow? the more I think about this the the more I sweat. the bad guys have access to the same tech as the good guys: big data stuff, machine learning, little iot devices with lots of processing power, etc. it's not hard to imagine the bad guys developing their own attack-iot devices, little doodads they can scatter around a neighborhood to intercept messages. even if they cannot crack the encyption, they can use the same AI stuff the good guys use to draw useful bad-guy inferences, just based on messaging behavior. I'm beginning to thing message randomization should be a core feature. am I too paranoid or clueless? gregg gregg NOTICE: All information in and attached to the e-mails below may be proprietary, confidential, privileged and otherwise protected from improper or erroneous disclosure. If you are not the sender's intended recipient, you are not authorized to intercept, read, print, retain, copy, forward, or disseminate this message. If you have erroneously received this communication, please notify the sender immediately by phone (704-758-1000) or by e-mail and destroy all copies of this message electronic, paper, or otherwise. By transmitting documents via this email: Users, Customers, Suppliers and Vendors collectively acknowledge and agree the transmittal of information via email is voluntary, is offered as a convenience, and is not a secured method of communication; Not to transmit any payment information E.G. credit card, debit card, checking account, wire transfer information, passwords, or sensitive and personal information E.G. Driver's license, DOB, social security, or any other information the user wishes to remain confidential; To transmit only non-confidential information such as plans, pictures and drawings and to assume all risk and liability for and indemnify Lowe's from any claims, losses or damages that may arise from the transmittal of documents or including non-confidential information in the body of an email transmittal. Thank you. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://lists.iotivity.org/pipermail/iotivity-dev/attachments/20170113/78112beb/attachment.html>
