Securing The Communication Of Smart Spaces Using Bluetooth

The spaces around us are getting full of devices and home appliances that serve as a pathway for user comfortability. These physical devices collect data from their environment and report back to other entities (e.g., computing devices, servers) that maintain and use the data in different applications. With the on-growing popularity of smart spaces, the need to secure the communication and interaction between the smart devices also increases. The challenge is to prevent intruders from accessing the private data of the users and from triggering unsecure actions. Unsecure actions include tapping into home surveillance cameras, acquiring the user’s current location or track when they are in or out of their homes. Fortunately, most of the current appliances and devices used in smart spaces are equipped with lightweight Bluetooth capabilities, that allow the interaction and transmission of data to and from these devices through Bluetooth channels. The Bluetooth module can then be utilized to secure the interactions and communications between smart devices and to maintain the required levels of data privacy. To achieve these goals, devices have to pair securely to request and access the data from one another and send encrypted data messages ensuring that only the authorized devices can decrypt them. In this presentation, I will present and show a demo on how smart space users can secure an interaction and communication channel between their personal computer and a temperature sensor attached to a sensor platform in their smart space. The platform used is an Arduino platform while the attached temperature sensor collects the room’s temperature when requested and sends such information back to the personal computer through a Bluetooth communication module. The information transferred between the devices is secured through a lightweight encryption mechanism with the objective of preventing eavesdropping or data alteration. The mechanism secures the communication channel between the personal computer and Arduino by initializing the conversation with a pre-deployed master key that both devices have (authorization key). Once both devices initialize conversation, a new session key will be generated and sent by one of the devices to encrypt all communication thereafter (communication key). In the demo, the audience will have the opportunity to directly interact with the network and visualize the communication between the devices, from the initial request to the response with the data of the room’s temperature