Monitoring Systems and the Internet of Things have become increasingly important, among others, in Renewable Energy applications. A combination of measuring sensors and actuators controlled and processed by an intelligent central system is necessary to reduce energy consumption automatically. This paper develops a modern concept for a Smart Energy House. The functionality and the hardware implementation are explained in detail based on a concrete simulation of the self-refilling water tank. The system comprises various separate located IoT modules integrated with a central host using TCP/IP network infrastructure, as well as communication technologies and protocols, such as WiFi and MQTT. Those sensors, also called clients, are wireless devices designed to measure different environmental conditions, such as temperature and humidity, in real-time. Changes in the current water level and battery charging progress are also being monitored. The host consists of three parts: storage service, web-based monitoring platform, and program logic for decision-making methods. Most of the processes, such as electrical control, data collection, information query, and analyzing functions, were implemented using Python libraries and self-written algorithms. An essential part of an intelligent home monitoring and automation system is secured remote accessibility and maintenance in any emergency. Therefore, the system supports both local and remote access. Data visualization and alarming routines are implemented within the web-based free software “Grafana” combined with the time-series database “InfluxDB”. Finally, the results demonstrated in this article show that the system has excellent application prospects due to its stability, low cost, high performance, user-friendly and customary configuration. The concept has been improved and prepared for the Smart Energy House test object located in Berlin.
TP-Link Technologies Co, Ltd. is a Chinese manufacturer of networking products and has a 42% share of the consumer WLAN market, making it the market leader. The company sells about 150 million devices per year. Many people worldwide use the Internet every day and are connected to the Internet with their computers. In the world of smart homes, even coffee machines, refrigerators, smart sockets, and light bulbs have found their way to the Internet, not to mention the many smartphones, which are, of course, also connected to the Internet. Since many different dangers come from a heater or printer and the many other smart devices directly connected to the Internet, there is a safe haven: the local area network. To connect to the Internet, one needs a modem, which is built into a router in many cases. Routers route network packets back and forth between several computer networks. They are used to connect to the Internet, and they are the bridge between the home network and the Internet in almost every household connected to the Internet. Because of their nature as a bridge between local and global networks, they are also the largest attack vector. [19] This paper examines how up-to-date the firmware of standard home network routers is and how secure the firmware is. In order to obtain a representative result, the examined routers were selected according to fixed rules. Each router had to be a product of the manufacturer TP-Link, the routers had to be in the low-budged range (less than 20 Euro) and be available from Amazon. Also, two different types of investigations were identified for the selected devices. Firstly, the devices were examined in the form of physically existing hardware, and secondly, an attempt was made to access the firmware via the manufacturer’s website. It was found that even the fixing of current vulnerabilities and recently released update files are no guarantee that older vulnerabilities have been fixed. Secrets such as private keys and certificates are hard-coded in the firmware and can be extracted from update files. Moreover, devices are deliberately built to make it impossible to install the latest alternative firmware.
The Internet of Things and the Smart Home have become an increasingly important topic in recent years. The growing popularity of Smart Home Devices such as Smart TVs, Smart Door Locks, Smart Light Bulbs, and other devices is causing a rapid increase of vulnerabilities. Also, there are several vulnerabilities in software and hardware that make the security situation more complex and troublesome. Many of these systems and devices also process personal or secret data and control critical industrial processes. The need for security is extremely high. Owners and administrators of modern IoT devices are often overwhelmed with the task of securing their systems. Today, the spectrum of Smart Home technologies is growing faster than security can be guaranteed. Unsecured vulnerabilities endanger the security and privacy of consumers. This paper aims to examine the security and privacy aspects of Wi-Fi Connected and App-Controlled IoT-Based Smart Home Devices. For this purpose, the communication between the device, app, and the manufacturer's servers, as well as the firmware of the individual devices, will be examined. In particular, this paper highlights why it is important to make consumers aware of the security and privacy aspects of Smart Home devices. Finally, it will be shown which dangers exist when using these devices, how the use of these devices affects the privacy and security of the device and its users, and whether the devices comply with the European General Data Protection Regulation.
Since its invention, the Internet has changed the world, but above all, it has connected people. With the advent of the Internet of Things, the Internet connects things today much more than people do. A large part of the Internet of Things consists of IoT controlled Smart Home devices. The Internet of Things and the Smart Home have become an increasingly important topic in recent years. The growing popularity of Smart Home devices such as Smart TVs, Smart Door Locks, Smart Light Bulbs, and others is causing a rapid increase in vulnerable areas. In the future, many IoT devices could be just as many targets. The many new and inexperienced manufacturers and the absence of established uniform standards also contribute to the precarious situation. Therefore, new methods are needed to sensitize and detect these threats. In this paper, different existing approaches like those of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and the Open Web Application Security Project (OWASP) are combined with concepts of this work like the Smart Home Device Life Cycle. In the context of this paper, a universal 31-page question-based test procedure is developed that can be applied to any Smart Home device. Based on this new, innovative security checklist, the communication between device, app, and the manufacturer's servers, as well as the firmware of IoT devices, can be analyzed and documented in detail. In the course of this paper, also a handout in the abbreviated form will be created, which serves the same purpose.