{"id":2098,"date":"2016-10-15T20:22:04","date_gmt":"2016-10-15T18:22:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ofcourseimright.com\/?p=2098"},"modified":"2016-10-15T20:22:04","modified_gmt":"2016-10-15T18:22:04","slug":"home-wireless-security-challenges-for-things","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ofcourseimright.com\/?p=2098","title":{"rendered":"Home wireless security challenges for Things"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Wifi\"What’s the right way to connect a Thing to your home network?\u00a0 Way back in the good old days, say last year, in order to connect a device to your home network, you could do it easily enough because the system had a display and a touch screen or a keyboard.\u00a0 With many Things, there is no display and there is no keyboard, and some of the devices we are connecting may themselves not be that accessible to the home owner.\u00a0 Think attic fans or even some light bulbs.\u00a0 A means is needed first to tell these devices which network is the correct network to join, and then what the credentials for that network are.\u00a0 In order to do any of this, there needs to be a way for the home router to communicate with the device in a secure and confidential way.\u00a0 That means that each end requires some secret.\u00a0 Public key cryptography is perfect for this, and it is how things would work in the enterprise.<\/p>\n

WPA2 Enterprise<\/em> makes use of individual keys and a flexible means to authenticate individuals and devices.\u00a0 It looks a little like this:<\/p>\n

\"EAP<\/p>\n

EAP stands for Extensible Access Protocol<\/a>, and it is just that.\u00a0 There are many different authentication mechanisms available with EAP.\u00a0\u00a0 One method called EAP-TLS calls for both sides of the communication to transmit a certificate in an authentication transaction that contains their identities as certified by someone.\u00a0 Initially, a device may be certified by its manufacturer, but then later it would use a certificate that is certified by the local network system.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

One challenge is getting the device certificate to be known by the network. One simple method to do this is to have an application tied to a camera that scans a QR code that points to a URL containing a signed copy of the device\u2019s identity or certificate.\u00a0 For instance, the QR code to the right encodes this URL:<\/p>\n

https:\/\/www.ofcourseimright.com\/qr\/2834298343404739274639374630463934<\/a><\/pre>\n
which in turn gets you a certificate.\u00a0 The next challenge is whether the device should trust the network. In the enterprise, there is a new approach being developed\u00a0 known as Bootstrapping Remote Secure Key Infrastructures (BRSKI)<\/span><\/a> (sometimes pronounced \u201cbrewski\u201d).\u00a0 In this case the manufacturer tells the device that the network is the correct one to join by essentially providing the device the network’s operational trust anchor.\u00a0 This allows the device to validate the network’s certificate.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s something of a tall order even in the enterprise, but one that is worth aiming for.\u00a0 If the home can leverage a service offered either by a service provider or by a new fangled home router company, if THEY can authenticate the home, and the manufacturer can authenticate them, then we have ourselves a ball game.\u00a0 More work needed to get all the elements in place.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
It\u2019s hard \u2013 but not impossible \u2013 for Things to connect to a home network in some sort of automated fashion.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":172,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[87,545,9],"tags":[547,546],"class_list":["post-2098","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-internet","category-iot","category-security","tag-home-security","tag-iot-security"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ofcourseimright.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2098","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ofcourseimright.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ofcourseimright.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ofcourseimright.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/172"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ofcourseimright.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2098"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/ofcourseimright.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2098\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2119,"href":"https:\/\/ofcourseimright.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2098\/revisions\/2119"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ofcourseimright.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2098"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ofcourseimright.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2098"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ofcourseimright.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2098"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}