Detecting Insteon Home Automation Network Attacks Using a Software Defined Radio (SDR) Radio Frequency Air Monitor

Market competition among home automation suppliers has stimulated the usual flurry of television ads and door-to-door sales activity, with consumers being nudged toward buying specific products based on convenience (remote wireless access) and peace of mind (security) factors. Apart from product cost and condition factors, the old "buyer beware" adage applies to security given that cyber-based home automation products are subject to some of the same cyberattacks as their industrial counterparts. This includes unauthorized home automation network access and functional control of processes, devices, etc., using rogue devices. Authorized versus rogue device discrimination is addressed here for Insteon home automation devices with device identity (ID) authentication based on device-dependent Radio Frequency Distinct Native Attribute (RF-DNA) features to complement bit-level protection. Relative to prior related demonstrations in [19,20] which were based on collected emissions from a high cost receiver (similar to$100,000 USD), results here are based on collected emissions from a lower cost (orders-of-magnitude) Software Defined Radio (SDR) implementation. The goal is to move toward a more cost effective implementation of the Radio Frequency (RF) Air Monitor proposed in [20]. The envisioned RF Air Monitor will employ Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) with a "something you are" biometric-like RF-DNA Fingerprinting factor to enhance home automation security. As with human-based biometric processing, RF-DNA biometrics provide the speed and efficiency that make it one of the two top-ranked MFA factors for home automation smart device applications [8]. Rogue Rejection Rate (RRR) results are provided for Slope-Based Frequency Shift Keyed (SB-FSK) Fingerprinting using SDR collected emissions from six rogue YARD Stick One devices and include RRR approximate to 86% for 36 YARD Stick One SDR attacks.