A Threat Model for Extensible Smart Home Gateways

This paper proposes a threat model for a specific class of components of IoT infrastructures: smart home gateways extensible through plug-ins. The purpose of the proposed model is twofold. From one side, it helps to understand some possible issues that could be generated from a malicious or defective implementation of a plug-in and affect the gateway itself or other smart home devices. Consequently, the model could help programmers of gateway applications, plug-ins, and devices think about possible countermeasures and develop more resilient solutions. On the other side, the model could be regarded as a set of guidelines. Indeed, plug-in developers should not create plug-ins acting like the threats reported in the paper. To provide a first validation of the model, the paper presents a use case based on Home Assistant, an open-source smart home gateway application.