Multi-Device Context-Sensitive Attacks Against Privacy

Edgardo Alberto Barsallo Yi, Joshua David Oetting Majors, Aditya Vardhan Padala, Darren Wu, Aravind Machiry, Saurabh Bagchi

Abstract: As the adoption of wearable and smart devices increases, their privacy and security are still a concern. These devices collect sensitive data and constantly communicate with each other, posing new privacy threats that need to be understood and addressed. In this paper, we analyze the privacy of smart devices from a multi-device perspective. The central premise of our work is that information available at each device may be non-sensitive or lightly so, but by orchestrating information from multiple connected smart devices, it is possible to infer sensitive content. To verify this, we conduct a user study to understand user perceptions towards privacy on smart devices and contrast them with their actual behavior while operating these devices. We then present an attack framework that can leverage tightly coupled and connected smart devices, such as mobile, wearable, and smart TV, to leak sensitive information inferred from individually non-sensitive data. Finally, we introduce a tool based on NLP techniques to identify potential privacy vulnerabilities on smart devices and propose an integrated solution to increase smart devices' security. This analysis helps close the gap between user's perception and reality regarding privacy risks within their smart ecosystem.

External IDs:dblp:conf/codaspy/YiMPWMB25