Paper accepted at IMC ’24.
IoT Bricks Over v6: Understanding IPv6 Usage in Smart Homes
Tianrui Hu (Northeastern University), Daniel J. Dubois (Northeastern University), David Choffnes (Northeastern University)
Last updated: 09/11/2024
News
- 09/09/2024. This research has been accepted for publication at the 24th ACM Internet Measurement Conference (IMC 2024) with the paper titled “IoT Bricks Over v6: Understanding IPv6 Usage in Smart Homes.“
Abstract
Recent years have seen growing interest and support for IPv6 in residential networks. While nearly all modern networking devices and operating systems support IPv6, it remains unclear how this basic support translates into higher-layer functionality, privacy, and security in consumer IoT devices. In this paper, we present the first comprehensive study of IPv6 usage in smart homes in a testbed equipped with 93 distinct, popular consumer IoT devices. We investigate whether and how they support and use IPv6, focusing on factors such as IPv6 addressing, configuration, DNS and destinations, and privacy and security practices.
We find that, despite most devices having some degree of IPv6 support, in an IPv6-only network just 20.4% transmit data to Internet IPv6 destinations, and only 8.6% remain functional, indicating that consumer IoT devices are not yet ready for IPv6 networks. Furthermore, 16.1% of devices use easily traceable IPv6 addresses, posing privacy risks. Our findings highlight the inadequate IPv6 support in consumer IoT devices compared to conventional devices such as laptops and mobile phones. This gap is concerning, as it may lead to not only usability issues but also privacy and security risks for smart home users.
About this publication
Paper title: IoT Bricks Over v6: Understanding IPv6 Usage in Smart Homes
Authors: Tianrui Hu (Northeastern University), Daniel J. Dubois (Northeastern University), David Choffnes (Northeastern University)
Full Text: ACM DL, Paper
Software: Github
Dataset: Available here
Presentation: Will be added soon.
Citation:
@inproceedings{hu-imc24,
title={{IoT Bricks Over v6: Understanding IPv6 Usage in Smart Homes}},
author={Hu, Tianrui and Dubois, Daniel J. and Choffnes, David},
booktitle={Proc. of the Internet Measurement Conference (IMC'24)},
year={2024}
}
Acknowledgments
This research was partially supported by the NSF (ProperData 1955227, SPHERE 2330066).