Smart Locks: Exploring Security Breaches and Access Extensions

Abstract

The Internet of Things (IoT) has rapidly become one of the most popular devices acrossbusinesses and technology. Referred to as the next industrial revolution, it hastransformed the way devices interact with each other, with home automation being theone of the popular fields of IoT. Though IoT can make the devices smarter, it also has apotential to expose these same devices to an attacker, to exploit their vulnerabilities, thusraising a concern for security.This paper deals with the security aspects of one of the popular subsets of homeautomation systems: smart locks. Smart locks replace the traditional door locks; they canbe electronically controlled by mobile devices or the lock manufacturer’s remote servers.The current state of art, design, implementation, vulnerabilities and the attacks that can beexploited on these devices are discussed. A solution that addresses the design andarchitecture of IoT smart lock in providing a better security mechanism is proposed forachieving smarter and secure smart homes. It is shown through experimental analysis thatthe proposed smart lock system is secure against unauthorized access, replay, and relayattacks.