Researchers look to map IoT universe using drone

A team of security geeks is set to map online internet-of-things things universe using a drone.

The project run by Texas-based firm Praetorian is being conducted in researchers' free time and hopes to explore the functionality and security integrity of internet-of-things devices operating on the popular ZigBee communications protocol.

The project would be expected to do for internet-of-things things what the SHODAN scanner did for industrial control systems exposed to the internet by highlighting security vulnerabilities.

"At its core, this project is driven by exploration," the team says, The Register reported.

"Where are these things? Who made them? What do they do? Are they secure? These are some of the questions we hope to answer.

"The first step of our exploration involves locating and fingerprinting ZigBee-enabled smart devices and networks. We're starting local and expanding from here. It's a big world to explore and billions of things to discover."

The drone could be tracked flying over Austin, Texas in real time on the project map and so far it had uncovered over 1600 unique internet-of-things things, of which 453 are made by Sony, and 110 by Philips.

Meanwhile, networked appliances on the Internet of Things (IoT) were mostly not too demanding on bandwidth and they often just shared simple data that required only a few bytes to transfer from one device to another, Venture Beat reported.

For instance, a sensor might update a computer with a machine's current fuel efficiency, or the temperature of a commercial refrigeration unit – and, in network terms, this did not amount to much traffic.

In fact, only around 1 per cent  of all network bandwidth was being used by the IoT.

However, the 3G and 4G networks that largely supported the IoT were designed for data-hungry connections, such as video-streaming services and web browsing.

In other words, bandwidth was not the problem, it was the price.

The large US wireless carriers required a certain Return on Investment to continue to build and maintain mobile networks and support the growth of IoT with most IoT devices today providing only a fraction of the revenue that a typical smartphone generated in a month.

The economics of IoT presented a challenge for the wireless carriers today, and this problem would only grow over time as the number of connected devices grew exponentially in the next decade.

That was the reason why people, like Google Developer Advocate Don Dodge, said a new, inexpensive IoT-dedicated network was needed.

According to Dodge although Wi-Fi could be used to connect devices fairly cheaply, it was not practical because it limited use to the home or office environment, when in reality availability was required everywhere.