Towards Self-Managing Home Networking Systems

Yi-Min WangCybersecurity and Systems Management

Microsoft Research, Redmond(Google “Strider Wang”)

The Aladdin Home Networking System

• Seven Windows PC connected by 10Mbps phoneline Ethernet– PC peripherals: USB cameras, IR controllers, etc.

• Sixty X10-based powerline devices– Controlled devices

• Lamps, fans, garage door openers, robo-dogs, beeper/chimer timers, etc.

– Converters• Wireless-to-powerline transceivers

– Transmitters • Wired and wireless controllers, phone-based controller,

PC-based controllers (CM11A powerline transceivers)• Sensors: motion sensors, water sensors, temperature

sensors, power outage sensors, garage door sensors, etc.

Aladdin: connect to your house at any time, from any place, on any device

Email

My HomeBuddy

MonitoringDaemon

DCOM DeviceControlObjects

LookupServices

NaturalLanguage

Parser

Soft-State Store

Text-basedInterface

Eventing

MSN

Aladdin DeviceAdapter (ADA)SIMBA

MyAlertBuddy

IM &Email

Project Goals

• Home network as “part of my Internet”• Mid-size ubiquitous computing system

– Heterogeneous networks and devices– Mostly “low-cost”, off-the-shelf consumer devices– Limited mobility

• Deployed in a real house and used on a daily basis for three years

• Project goals:– Is this something that people can really live with? – What are the “killer apps”?– Study self-configuration & self-monitoring

requirements

Self-Configuration

• Aladdin Device Adapter (ADA)– Device named by: device type + physical location

(pre-mapped to X10 address)• e.g., lamp on “the living room side of the kitchen”, which

is mapped to X10 address “E4”

– ADA enables self-configuration & -reconfiguration with “dumb” devices

• Even smart devices need “field attributes”

• Soft-State Store– Volatile or persistent state that will expire if not

refreshed

One-step administration: X10 communication address to physical location mapping

D10

D16

E3

O16

P16

K3

F3

F16

G5

E4J14J16

E16

BonusRoom

MasterBedroom

KitchenLivingRoom

FamilyRoom

GarageCrawlSpace N3

X10Transmitter

AC currentsensor

Simple Logic

X10Receiver

Powerline

Aladdin Device Adapter

LampE4

• Announce– AC current sensor detects current thru device– Transmit device type and X10 address in

extended X10 code over powerline

• Revoke– Report device leaving (broken, switched off,

unplugged, etc.)

• Refresh– Periodically re-Announce: allow detecting ADA

leaving

Powerline

PC #1 PC #2

PhonelineEthernet

Attribute-Based

Lookup Service(ABLS)

AladdinDeviceAdapter

Device type + Communication address (= Physical location)

Name-Based

Lookup Service(NBLS)

Bridging protocol address

Object

Device Announcement Protocol

Multi-time-scale Soft-State Store

Soft-State Store (SSS)

Volatile StorePersistent Store

Name-BasedLookupService(NBLS)

Attribute-BasedLookupService(ABLS) Eventing

DaemonHeartbeats

ObjectHeartbeats

DeviceHeartbeats

Added;Changed;Deleted;

MetaChanged

SensorHeartbeat

s& States

Self-Monitoring

• Daily end-to-end self-test– Powerline database Ethernet

Internet IM/email service cell phone SMS service

• Powerline anomaly detection– Receivers embedded into the house

responding to unintended control signals

12:31AM, Sep. 24, 1999 - House under attack...00:31:42 - Address = M13 >>>>> ALERT: BOGUS ADDRESS <<<<< ...00:35:07 - Func = C HailRequest(8)...00:35:13 - Func = F AllLightsOn(1)...00:35:59 - Func = M ExtendedDataTransfer(12) >>>>> ALERT: BOGUS ADDRESS <<<<< ...00:36:09 - Address = M13 >>>>> ALERT: BOGUS ADDRESS <<<<< ...00:36:12 - Func = M Dim(4) Change in brightness level = 0x0e >>>>> ALERT: BOGUS ADDRESS <<<<< ...00:38:00 - Func = E HailAcknowledge(9) >>>>> ALERT: BOGUS ADDRESS <<<<< ...00:38:50 - Func = I On(2)...00:40:26 - Func = N AllLightsOn(1) >>>>> ALERT: BOGUS ADDRESS <<<<< ...00:45:14 - Func = E AllLightsOn(1) >>>>> ALERT: BOGUS ADDRESS <<<<< ...01:24:31 - Func = K AllLightsOn(1) >>>>> ALERT: BOGUS ADDRESS <<<<< ...01:25:28 - Func = I AllUnitsOff(0)...01:26:24 - Func = E AllLightsOff(6) >>>>> ALERT: BOGUS ADDRESS <<<<< ...01:44:52 - Func = J StatusRequest(15) >>>>> ALERT: BOGUS ADDRESS <<<<<

01:44AM, Sep. 24 1999 - Attacker identified

A plugged-in CM11A interfaceWith a floating serial-port connector !Operator error + non-fail-stop failure

Powerline Monitoring

• Model-based fault detection system– Experimentally develop a finite state automaton

that models all legal sequences of X10 commands• X10 protocol is under-specified

– Deduce model state indirectly from the sequence of observed powerline commands

• Hidden state and unobservable illegal transitions

– Detect model violations via regular expressions on observable X10 command sequences

– Detector itself is self-stabilizing

Summary

• Truly ubiquitous computing means a lot of people using a lot of devices in their daily activities– Need low-cost, off-the-shelf consumer devices

• Low-cost consumer devices are less robust and less reliable– Systems management cost is too high

• Including security and safety concerns

• Two things are necessary to make it happen– Need a “universal killer app” to drive up the volume

and make low-cost, robust/reliable devices possible– As self-managing as possible

“Killer Apps” for My Family

• Parents receive an IM/email when kids get home safely and disable alarm

• Remotely check on the house while on vacation

• Receive an IM when water sensor detects water leakage

• Receive an IM upon power outage

For more information

• Google “Aladdin Wang”– News article

• “It was a fishy way for a scientist to start wiring houses onto Web,” Seattle-PI news article

• “There's No Place Like Home,” Microsoft Research News & Highlights

– Papers• “A Toolkit for Building Dependable and Extensible Home

Networking Applications,” Usenix Windows Systems Symposium

• “Towards Dependable Home Networking: An Experience Report,” IEEE DSN/FTCS

• “The SIMBA User Alert Service Architecture for Dependable Alert Delivery,” IEEE DSN

• “Model-based Fault Detection in Powerline Networking,” IPDPS