Robustness of Smart Smoke Detectors under Denial-of-Service Attacks in Networked Environments

Objective:

The goal of this thesis is to systematically investigate to what extent smart smoke detectors are affected by Denial-of-Service (DoS) attacks. The work will identify technical vulnerabilities and evaluate whether critical functionality (e.g., fire detection and alarm triggering) remains operational during an active attack. Ideally, the results should allow for general conclusions about the resilience of safety-critical IoT components beyond the specific devices tested.

Potential Work Packages (not exhaustive):

• Selection and setup of smart smoke detectors in a realistic smart home testbed (devices provided)
• Analysis of system architecture (communication protocols, cloud/app dependencies, local vs. central processing)
• Identification and categorization of potential DoS attack vectors
• Implementation of targeted DoS attacks (e.g., network saturation, packet flooding, deauthentication attacks, cloud service disruption)
• Controlled functional testing (e.g., smoke detection response during active attack)
• Evaluation of results in light of safety and reliability requirements for IoT security devices

Optional Extensions (depending on time and interest):

• Comparison across different devices or vendors
• Evaluation of multiple attack vectors
• Simulation of more complex smart home scenarios with multiple interconnected components
• Exploration of basic countermeasures (e.g., traffic shaping, local fallback modes)

Note:

This topic is well-suited for students with an interest in IT security, embedded systems, and networked devices in real-world use cases. It is strongly recommended that students have prior experience with networking and embedded systems — for example, through successful completion of courses such as Telematics and/or Mobile Communication, as well as Embedded Systems Architecture and/or the Microprocessor Lab. Basic familiarity with system-level analysis and protocol behavior will be beneficial. If you’re interested, please get in touch via e-mail to schedule a meeting where we can discuss the topic in more detail and align on the scope.