Internet of Things Forensics in Smart Homes: Design, Implementation, and Analysis of Smart Home Laboratory

The Internet of Things (IoT) has skyrocketed to the forefront of everyone’s lives, whether they know it or not. IoT devices have been incorporated into all facets of life, from the medical industry to transportation and it has even made its way into our homes. These devices have access to vast amounts of data, especially personal data. However, due to the compact nature of these devices, insufficient effort has been made to incorporate security into their design. With that in mind, IoT devices are treasure-troves of potential evidentiary data for forensic investigators, especially when these devices are used to aid in criminal activities. Concerning IoT devices, there is a need to investigate these devices to find answers to questions such as, what data can be recovered from these devices along with their respective smartphone applications? What methods would be best suited for collecting and analyzing this data? What data do these devices share with each other? Are there any privacy concerns when using these devices? Are there any security vulnerabilities when using these devices? Finding answers to these questions will considerably reduce the amount of time investigators spend collecting evidence during a case. New IoT devices are always becoming available and the research into each cannot keep up. As such, there is a gap in the literature regarding both the privacy and security of these devices and the most efficient methods to investigate them. Therefore, in this study, we aim to address this need by first building our own IoT forensics laboratory at Purdue University. Several students (undergraduate and graduate) work under the supervision of their faculty advisor to populate this lab with relevant IoT devices to simulate that of a smart home. This setup would allow us to simulate possible real-world smart home events (i.e. IoT device compromise, IoT device as a witness) which we can then investigate to both find answers to aforementioned questions and develop efficient methods to investigate these IoT devices. In this paper we will discuss several ways in which IoT devices in a smart home can be compromised and also investigate these devices after the compromise to determine what data can be recovered, how to recover the data and where this data resides.