Web-based Attacks to Discover and Control Local IoT Devices

Abstract

In this paper, we present two web-based attacks against local IoT devices that any malicious web page or third-party script can perform, even when the devices are behind NATs. In our attack scenario, a victim visits the attacker's website, which contains a malicious script that communicates with IoT devices on the local network that have open HTTP servers. We show how the malicious script can circumvent the same-origin policy by exploiting error messages on the HTML5 MediaError interface or by carrying out DNS rebinding attacks. We demonstrate that the attacker can gather sensitive information from the devices (e.g., unique device identifiers and precise geolocation), track and profile the owners to serve ads, or control the devices by playing arbitrary videos and rebooting. We propose potential countermeasures to our attacks that users, browsers, DNS providers, and IoT vendors can implement.