Authors
Igor Zavalyshyn, Nuno O Duarte, Nuno Santos
Description
We are gradually moving to the reality in which every appliance in our homes is connected to the Internet. We already have smart fridges, TVs, lights and thermostats and there are more coming. But the whole design of these devices and the services they provide is centered around collection and further processing of sensor data in the cloud outside of users’ control. In order to benefit from the desired service, users are forced to blindly trust the service provider with their sensitive information. As a result, this raises a lot of concerns about the private data being collected and used in ways it was not supposed to.
In this position paper we report the ongoing development of HomePad, a framework that aims to address the privacy problem of modern smart home services. It acts as a data hub and a processing unit for all the smart devices owned by the user. Apps provided by the service providers run in HomePad and process raw sensor data under users’ control. With HomePad smart home owners can verify the privacy guarantees of each app at install time and eliminate any possible data leaks.
Scholar articles