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Securing vulnerable home IoT devices with an in-hub security manager

The proliferation of consumer Internet of Things (IoT) devices offers as many convenient benefits as it poses significant vulnerabilities. Patching or otherwise mitigating these vulnerabilities will be difficult for the existing home security ecosystem. This paper proposes a central security manager that is built on top of the smarthome's hub or gateway router and positioned to intercept all traffic to and from devices. Aware of the status of all devices in the home and of reported vulnerabilities, the security manager could intervene as needed to deter or alleviate many types of security risks. Modules built atop this manager could offer convenient installation of software updates, filter traffic that might otherwise exploit devices, and strengthen authentication for both legacy and future devices. We believe that this design offers the potential to increase security for smarthome IoT devices, and we encourage other researchers and regulators to explore and extend our ideas.