Investigating the Robustness of IoT Security Cameras against Cyber Attacks

In recent years, Internet of Things (IoT) become widely used in various domains. Particularly, consumers are increasingly using IoT devices to build smart homes. These IoT devices can collect data and enable users to manage and secure their smart home environment. However, IoT devices are the target of malicious users and activities. Hence, the security is particularly important for IoT based smart home devices. This paper aims to experimentally evaluate the robustness and resilience of a particular type of IoT devices, known as smart home security cameras, against several common cyber attacks. The attack platform is Kali Linux operation system, which is installed with different types of penetration-testing and cyber-attack programs. The experimental results demonstrate clearly that the evaluated smart home security cameras are very vulnerable to the tested cyber-attacks, and do not deploy built-in efficient security features. As a consequence, this investigation contributes to confirm the belief that most current IoT based smart home devices are designed and built without sufficient security considerations and solutions and may not be very reliable in untrust and unsafe environments.