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SPIES Lab, Computer Science and Engineering

Texas A&M University College of Engineering

Home Alone

The Insider Threat of Unattended Wearables and A Defense using Audio Proximity

In this project, we highlight and study the threat arising from the unattended wearable devices pre-paired with a smartphone over a wireless communication medium. Most users may not lock their wearables due to their small form factor, and may strip themselves off of these devices often, leaving or forgetting them unattended while away from homes (or shared office spaces). An “insider” attacker (potentially a disgruntled friend, roommate, colleague, or even a spouse) can therefore get hold of the wearable, take it near the user’s phone (i.e., within radio communication range) at another location (e.g., user’s office), and surreptitiously use it across physical barriers for various nefarious purposes, including pulling and learning sensitive information from the phone (such as messages, photos or emails), and pushing sensitive commands to the phone (such as making phone calls, sending text messages and taking pictures). The attacker can then safely restore the wearable, wait for it to be left unattended again and may repeat the process for maximum impact, while the victim remains completely oblivious to the ongoing attack activity. This malicious behavior is in sharp contrast to the threat of stolen wearables where the victim would unpair the wearable as soon as the theft is detected. Considering the severity of this threat, we also respond by building a defense based on audio proximity, which limits the wearable to interface with the phone only when it can pick up on an active audio challenge produced by the phone.

HAW attack example scenarios. An attacker with an unattended wearable comes in the Bluetooth range of the phone while being hidden across physical barriers, e.g., (a) wall, and (b) floor.

HAW attack example scenarios. An attacker with an unattended wearable comes in the Bluetooth range of the phone while being hidden across physical barriers, e.g., (a) wall, and (b) floor.

People

Faculty

  • Nitesh Saxena

Student

  • Prakash Shrestha (PhD student)
  • Babins Shrestha (@UAB; PhD 2016; now Cybersecurity Professional at Visa)

Publication

  • Home Alone: The Insider Threat of Unattended Wearables and A Defense using Audio Proximity.
    Prakash Shrestha, Babins Shrestha, and Nitesh Saxena.
    To appear in IEEE Conference on Communications and Network Security (CNS), May/June 2018.
    [pdf]

Recent News

  • Paper accepted to CCS 2023 September 2, 2023
  • Paper accepted to PETS 2024 August 31, 2023
  • Paper accepted to CNS 2023 August 13, 2023
  • Paper accepted to MobiCom 2023 August 6, 2023
  • Presenting SPIES’ 13th PhD Graduate — Shalini Saini June 20, 2023
  • Dr. Saxena appointed as Associate Director of Cybersecurity Institute June 7, 2023
  • Saxena and team awarded $6M DOD grant on cognitive security May 3, 2023
  • Dr. Saxena appointed as the Vice Chair of EFAC May 3, 2023
  • Paper accepted to MobiSys 2023 May 2, 2023
  • Paper accepted to ICDCS 2023 April 11, 2023
  • Journal paper accepted to ACM Computing Surveys April 2, 2023
  • 3 full papers accepted to WiSec 2023 March 28, 2023
  • Paper accepted to Oakland 2023 March 14, 2023
  • Paper accepted to USENIX Security 2023 February 21, 2023
  • Cybersecurity Program Led By Dr. Saxena Ranks Best! January 26, 2023
  • EarSpy in Media January 26, 2023
  • Dr. Saxena is a Co-PI on Thematic AI Lab November 28, 2022
  • Paper accepted to PMC 2022 November 28, 2022
  • Paper accepted to ICISC 2022 November 28, 2022
  • A New Grant from NSA October 17, 2022

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