Digital technological breakthroughs have brought about a huge change in the way the society interacts, responds to the immediate environment and the way that people live. Furthermore, Ubiquitous Computing and dirt cheap sensors have created a new paradigm in digital technology where human beings could control their environment in a different approach. In a number of paradigms of digital technology, multiple proprietary solutions in industry results in a huge cost for the end users to use the technology and thus a very sluggish penetration of the technology into the society. Moreover, such unorganized and vendor oriented standards create additional burdens on a person concerned in design and implementation.  This thesis presents existing and emerging technologies in relation to smart home environment having an aim to manifest available open standards and platforms. Smart Home Environment Infrastructures have been presented and discussed. Evaluation and integration of a proprietary elderly care sensor system dubbed   C.STATUSTM and the MediaSense overlay network has also been presented. Performance measurement and comparison has been conducted in relation to the proprietary sensor system running on the top of the peer-to-peer MediaSense Platform with the existing C.STATUSTM centralized sensor system. C.STATUSTM User Interface has been designed and implemented for an Android mobile platform. / smart home environment, Internet of things

The proliferation of mobile devices has resulted in the creation of an unprecedented amount of context about their users. Furthermore, the era of the Internet of Things (IoT) has begun and it will bring with it even more context and the ability for users to effect their environment through digital means. Applications that exist in the IoT ecosystem must treat context as a first class citizen and use it to simplify what would otherwise be an unmanageable amount of information. This thesis proposes the use of context to build a new class of applications that are focused on enhancing normal human behaviour and moving complexity away from the user. We present Yakkit—a location based messaging application that allows users to communicate with others nearby. The use of context allows Yakkit to be used without the creation of a login or a profile and enhances the normal way one would interact in public. To make Yakkit work we explore different ways of modelling location context and application deployment through experimentation. We model location in an attempt to predict a user’s final destination based on their current position and the trajectories of past users. Finally, we experiment deploying the Yakkit service on different servers to observe the effect of distance on the message transit time of Yakkit messages. / Graduate / przemek@uvic.ca

Due to the requirements of the Web 2.0 applications and the relational databaseshave a limitation in horizontal scalability. NoSQL databases have become moreand more popular in recent years. However, it is not easy to select a databasethat is suitable for a specific use. This thesis describes the detailed design, im plementation and final performance evaluation of a key-value NoSQL databasefor the SensibleThings platform, which is an Internet of Things platform. Thethesis starts by comparing the different types of NoSQL databases to select themost appropriate one. During the implementation of the database, the algorithms for data partition, data access, replication, addition and removal ofnodes, failure detection and handling are dealt with. The final results for theload distribution and the performance evaluation are also presented in this pa per. At the end of the thesis, some problems and improvements that need betaken into consideration in the futures.

With the rapid development of the Internet connected technologies and applications, people are keen on embracing the convenience and practi-­‐‑ calities they brings. As all kinds of technologies improve, the Internet of Things matures and is able to provide more advanced services to people, which connects a variety of devices, systems and applications beyond traditional machine-­‐‑to-­‐‑machine. However, it covers a variety of devices, protocols and applications, which makes it much more complex than a normal network. Nevertheless, equipped with appropriate security solutions, the Internet of Things is promising to bring us more conven-­‐‑ iences and be widely applied in our daily life. And like the main appli-­‐‑ cation areas, wireless sensor networks with a frequent but short com-­‐‑ munication character, it requires an efficient and flexible protocol to protect the information. To protect the traffic of the Internet of Things is the focal point of this research work. Although many protocols for the Internet have been put forward, it is still not enough to meet the increas-­‐‑ ingly complex requirements from applications. Many of them are not efficient enough to adapt the device diversity and timely communica-­‐‑ tion environment. This research work is trying to address this problem, by proposing a peer-­‐‑to-­‐‑peer security protocol to satisfy this varied environment. Secure communication is implemented on an open sourced platform for the Internet of Things. The philosophy of the platform it implemented on is also inherited to this protocol and the implementation. It avoids unnecessary handshakes between entities, which makes it more efficient in a wireless sensor network. Modulariza-­‐‑ tion and unit test are adapted in implementation to enhance the robust of the system. Its dynamic security level adjustment feature satisfies the realistic demand on one platform this protocol is implemented on. Finally, with a comparison test and an analysis using the BAN logic, the result shows that the proposed protocol is efficient to meet the specific goals and applicable for the platform. / SensibleThings Platform

The development of Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) is enabled by the recent advances in wireless communication and sensing technologies. WSN have a wide range of scientific and commercial applications. In many applications the sensed data is useless if the location of the event is not associated with the data. Thus localization plays a substantial role in WSNs. Increased dependence on devices and sensed data presses for more efficient and accurate localization schemes. In many Internet of Things (IoT) deployments the area covered is large making it impossible to localize all devices and Sensor Networks (SNs) using single-hop localization techniques. A solution to this problem is to use a multi-hop localization technique to estimate devices' positions. In small areas SNs require at least three anchor nodes within their transmission range to estimate their location. Despite numerous existing localization techniques, the fundamental behavior of multi-hop localization is, as yet, not fully examined. Thus, we study the main characteristics of multi-hop localization and propose new solutions to enhance the performance of multi-hop localization techniques. We examine the assumptions in existing simulation models to build a more realistic simulation model, while studying and investigating the behavior of multi-hop localization techniques in large scale deployments before the actual deployment. We find that the introduced error follows the Gaussian distribution, but the estimated distance follows the Rayleigh distribution. We use the new simulation model to characterize the effect of hops on localization in both dense and sparse multi-hop deployments. We show that, contrary to common beliefs, in sparse deployments it is better to use long hops, while in dense deployments it is better to use short hops. Using short hops in dense deployments generates a large amount of traffic. Thus we propose a new solution which decreases and manages the overhead generated during the localization process. The proposed solution decreased the number of messages exchanged by almost 70% for DV-Distance and 55% for DV-Hop. Finally, we utilize mobile anchors instead of fixed anchors and propose a solution for the collinearity problem associated with the mobile anchor and use Kalman Filter (KF) to enhance the overall localization accuracy. Through simulation studies, we show that the scheme using a Kalman Filter decreases the estimation errors than using single direction by 31% and better than using weighted averages by 16% . As well, our new scheme overcomes the collinearity problem that appears from using mobile anchor nodes. / Thesis (Ph.D, Computing) -- Queen's University, 2014-04-30 01:53:55.817

The use of electronics connected to local networks and the Internet is growingall the time. Nowadays you can control your electronics in your house even when away from home, which opens up for potential security threats. The purpose of this report is to point out the potential risks with connecting home electronics to the Internet and to shed light on what security mechanisms that are needed in these kinds of systems. This report contains a theoretical part in which relevant material has been summarized. This material includes the smart home solution Tellstick Net and the wireless technologies ZigBee and Z-Wave, which are commonly used in home automation. The Tellstick Net system was mapped out and a risk analysis with attack trees was performed. After the analysis of the system, the implementation of two potential security threats were attempted. The two attempted attacks were replay attack and cross-site request forgery. The replay attack was unsuccessful due to the way the system communicates and keeps connections alive. However, the cross-site request forgery was discovered to be successful in some cases. It depended on if the browser of the target supported cross-origin resource sharing, as that property protects against cross-site request forgery. Finally, the report discusses what impact the found security deficiencies have, what they entail and how they reflect on the need for security in smart technologies for the home.

Denna rapport syftar till att beskriva arbetet kring att kunna detektera närvaro i ett rum medhjälp av så enkla sensorer som möjligt, kopplade till en Arduino. Samtidigt som detta skerså används också systemet till att med samma sensorer visa klimatet i rummet. Läsaren fåren inblick i problematiken med att detektera människor samt inom funktionen av de valdasensorerna. Utöver detta studeras energiförbrukningen i systemet. Rapportenmynnar ut i enslutsats där en procentuell chans för närvaro presenteras via en internetuppkoppling medhjälp av en omfattande testning av sensorernas beteende.

Smart Homes (SHs), as subsets of the Internet of Things (IoT), make use of Machine Learning and Arti cial Intelligence tools to provide technology-enabled solutions which assist their occupants and users with their Activities of Daily Living (ADL). Some SH provide always-present, health management support and care services. Having these services provided at home enables SH occupants such as the elderly and disabled to continue to live in their own homes and localities thus aiding Ageing In Place goals and eliminating the need for them to be relocated in order to be able to continue receiving the same support and services. Introducing and interconnecting smart, autonomous systems in homes to enable these service provisions and Assistance Technologies (AT) requires that certain interfaces in, and connections to, SH are exposed to the Internet, among other public-facing networks. This introduces the potential for cyber-physical attacks to be perpetrated through, from and against SH. Apart from the actual threats posed by these attacks to SH occupants and their homes, the potential that these attacks might occur can adversely a ect the adoption or uptake of SH solutions. This thesis identi es key attributes of the di erent elements (things or nodes and rooms or zones) in SHs and the relationships that exist between these elements. These relationships can be used to build SH security baselines for SHs such that any deviations from this baseline is described as anomalous. The thesis demonstrates the application of these relationships to Anomaly Detection (AD) through the analysis of several hypothetical scenarios and the decisions reached about whether they are normal or anomalous. This thesis also proposes an Internet of Things Digital Forensics Framework (IDFF), a Forensics Edge Management System (FEMS), a FEMS Decision-Making Algorithm (FDMA) and an IoT Incident Response plan. These tools can be combined to provide proactive (autonomous and human-led) Digital Forensics services within cyber-physical environments like the Smart Home.

Internet of Things är en utveckling som inte endast sträcker sig till de industriella områdena idag. Det når nu mera även ut till välfärdsteknologin. Både användare och företag påverkas idag av detta faktum. Företag har ett behov, och en plikt att värna om sina kunder, och kunder har ett behov av att göra sin röst hörd. Detta arbete har som syfte att utforska acceptansen hos de äldre till denna smarta välfärdsteknologi, samt vad som krävs för att öka acceptansen. Arbetet tillnärmar sig frågan genom litteratur som bas för enkäter och intervjuer, utförda i Sverige och Norge.Det visar sig att acceptansen beror på många olika faktorer, som alla uppfattas olika från person till person. Men att det i många fall kan koka ned till behovet. De flesta människorna vill helst bo hemma så länge som möjligt, i alla fall i Sverige och Norge. Men innan det har gått så långt så kan det vara oklart hur öppna folk är till teknologi som har möjlighet till att uppfattas som integritetskränkande. Nyckeln ligger i att göra teknologin så anpassningsbar som möjligt, vad gäller både funktion och utseende, samt andra faktorer som säkerhet, förståelse, användbarhet och kostnad.

Background. With the rise of Internet of Things and Internet connected devices many things become convenient and efficient but these products also carry risks. Even though a lot of people own devices like this not so many think of the consequences if these devices aren't secure. Objectives. Given this our thesis aims to discover the implications of vulnerable devices and also at what rate there are insecure, unpatched devices compared to the patched, secure counterpart. Methods. The approach implemented uses Shodan to find these devices on the internet and also to find version information about each device. After the devices are found the objective is to calculate a CVSS score on the vulnerabilities and the exploit that can abuse the vulnerability, if there exists any. Results. What we found was that 71.85% of a smart home server brand was running an insecure version. As to the consequences of having an insecure device, it can be severe.Conclusions. We found that, for instance, an attacker can without much difficulty shut off alarms in your smart home and then proceed to break into your house. Keywords: Vulnerability; Shodan; Internet of Things (IoT); Patching