Understanding the security and Privacy of Smart home devices.

总结：我的研究重点是从社交的角度来理解智能个人助理等智能家居设备中的安全和隐私问题。本文的研究目标是：首先了解智能家居设备的生态系统，然后识别设备的隐私和安全漏洞，最后针对识别出的任何漏洞提出并实现威胁模型。为了更好地了解研究领域，我研究了相关的科学文献，以突出这个问题，但最重要的是找出研究差距。在这样做之后，我能够提出一项用户研究，以检查研究目标并回答其中的一些元素。用户研究的目的是了解智能个人助理的可用性、安全性和隐私。这是针对两种流行的智能家居个人助理进行的：Amazon Echo和Google Home，它们检查了它们的功能/特性、安全和隐私漏洞。研究方法：本研究项目将采用不同的研究方法来回答项目的主要目标。在用户研究方面，采用扎根理论的方法，对智能家居个人助理用户进行半结构化访谈。扎根理论允许在收集和分析的数据中生成理论。它使我们能够识别数据之间的主题和类别，并得出结论[1]。最后，为了分析数据，将使用NVivo工具[2]。用户研究：用户研究包括两个阶段：筛选参与者和半结构化访谈。第一阶段将确保招募合法用户参与研究。为了做到这一点，多产的学术将被用作与SurveyPlanet一起收集回复的招聘工具[3]。筛选问题采用真假陈述来识别那些回答正确的人，因此有资格参加面试。研究的第二阶段是半结构化面试。访谈问题旨在了解这些设备的生态系统、用户在这些设备及其制造商如何共享、处理和存储数据方面的感知和心理模型。此外，该研究还试图确定使用这些设备时的安全和隐私风险和/或相关问题，检查某些功能，如语音身份验证、语音购买等。结论：研究结果将确定结果是否满足上面确定的关键目标，如果是，第二阶段将为该项目设计和实施下一个实验。用户研究和未来实验的结果将使我能够满足研究目标，提出智能家居设备安全和隐私的威胁模型和缓解策略。

Summary: The focus of my research is to understand the security and privacy issues in smart home devices such as intelligent personal assistants from social aspect. The objectives of my research are: Firstly understand the ecosystem of smart home devices, secondly identify the privacy and security vulnerabilities of the devices and finally propose and implement threat model for addressing any vulnerabilities identified. To better understand the research area, I have studied the related scientific literature to highlight the issue but most importantly identify the research gap. Having done so, I was able to propose a user study to examine the research objectives and answer some elements of it. The aim of the user study is to understand the usability, security and privacy of intelligent personal assistants. This is done focusing on two popular smart home personal assistants: Amazon Echo and Google Home examining their functionalities/features, security and privacy vulnerabilities. Methodology: This research project will implement different research methods to answer the key objectives of the project. For the user study, grounded theory method is implemented conducting semi structured interviews with smart home personal assistant users. Grounded theory allows to generate theories in data that has been collected and analysed. It allows us to identify themes and categories between the data and create conclusions [1]. Finally to analyse the data, Nvivo tool will be used [2].User study: The user study consists of two stages: Screening for participants and semi structured interviews. The first stage will ensure that legitimate users are recruited to take part in the study. To do this, Prolific academic will be used as a recruitment tool [3] alongside SurveyPlanet for collecting responses [4]. The screening questions implement true or false statements to identify those that have answered correctly therefore qualified for an interview.The second stage of the study is the semi structured interviews. The interview questions aim to understand the ecosystem of those devices, users' perceptions and mental models in terms of how data is shared, processed and stored by these devices and their manufactures. In addition the study seeks to identify the security and privacy risks and/or concerns associated in using these devices examining certain capabilities such as voice authentication, voice purchasing and more.Conclusion:The findings of the study will identify whether the results have met the key objectives identified above, if so the second stage is to design and implement the next experiment for this project. The results of the user study and future experiments will enable me to meet the research objectives proposing the threat model and mitigation strategies for the security and privacy of smart home devices.