Understanding the security and Privacy of Smart home devices.

总结：我的研究重点是从社交方面了解智能个人助理等智能家居设备的安全和隐私问题。我的研究目标是：首先了解智能家居设备的生态系统，其次识别设备的隐私和安全漏洞，最后提出并实施威胁模型来解决所识别的漏洞。为了更好地了解研究领域，我研究了相关的科学文献，以突出问题，但最重要的是找出研究差距。这样做之后，我就能够提出一个用户研究来检查研究目标并回答它的一些元素。用户研究的目的是了解智能个人助理的可用性、安全性和隐私性。本文主要针对两种流行的智能家居个人助理：亚马逊Echo和谷歌home，研究它们的功能/特性、安全和隐私漏洞。方法论：本研究项目将采用不同的研究方法来回答项目的关键目标。在用户研究方面，采用扎根理论方法对智能家居个人助理用户进行半结构化访谈。有根据的理论允许在收集和分析的数据中产生理论。它使我们能够识别数据之间的主题和类别，并得出结论[1]。最后对数据进行分析，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，多产学者将与SurveyPlanet一起作为招聘工具来收集反馈b[4]。筛选问题采用真假陈述来识别那些回答正确的人，从而有资格参加面试。研究的第二阶段是半结构化访谈。访谈问题旨在了解这些设备的生态系统，用户对这些设备及其制造商如何共享、处理和存储数据的看法和心理模型。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，并检查某些功能，如语音认证、语音购买等。结论：研究结果将确定结果是否满足上述确定的关键目标，如果是，第二阶段是为该项目设计和实施下一个实验。用户研究的结果和未来的实验将使我能够满足提出智能家居设备安全和隐私的威胁模型和缓解策略的研究目标。

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.