IoT - Element 2- Aplication Details and Environment Set - up

IoT Security Lab.

Scenario
CyberHealth Ltd. is a Teesside based cybersecurity solution provider, where you are working as a cybersecurity expert. Your company provides Networking & Cybersecurity solutions for the business environment. They currently offer managed, professional, and hardware & software services. Recently, few companies have approached CyberHealth to offer them services for their IoT solution clients. CyberHealth is interested in extending its business by providing services to its customers who offer IoT solutions. The use of telemedicine with the support IoT has increased globally due to COVID-19. Your company is more interested in healthcare related IoT solution providers or customers. In this context, you are assigned to analyse the security of an existing remote monitoring system (offered by an IoT solution provider) for elderly and chronic disease patients.

Application details:
Name: Home Assistant
Justification
The home assistant is an open source application that gives individuals greater control over their home automation and privacy. The reasoning behind choosing this application are as follows:
It is highly integratable with various IoT devices such as humidity sensors, dishwashers, mobile devices, e.t.c.,
It has a web monitoring dashboard which can be deployed for local home use only (in a LAN), or configured for access over the internet.
Components
The home assistant application comprises the following components:
The web dashboard:
The database:
Sensor devices: Sensor devices feed their data to the home assistant which in turn uses it to make decisions such as notifications sending, temperature control, device control among others.
For the purposes of this lab exercise we will be using only a mobile device sensor. To integrate the mobile device sensor, we would need the home assistant application. This will be covered under the deployment section.
Deployment
Home assistant can be deployed in multiple levels, they are:
Home Assistant Operating System: Minimal Operating System optimized to power Home Assistant. It comes with Supervisor to manage Home Assistant Core and Add-ons. Recommended installation method.
Home Assistant Container: Standalone container-based installation of Home Assistant Core (e.g. Docker).
Home Assistant Supervised: Manual installation of the Supervisor.
Home Assistant Core: Manual installation using Python virtual environment.
Reference link: Installation - Home Assistant (home-assistant.io)
For this demonstration, we choose the home assistant operating system as it would allow us to test multiple facets of the technology.
To deploy the home assistant operating system, the following steps were taken:
The disk image was downloaded from https://github.com/home-assistant/operating-system/releases/download/6.6/haos_ova-6.6.vdi.zip
A virtual machine was created for it with the specifications below:
3GB of RAM,
40GB of Storage,
2 CPU cores
Bridged network adapter (to allow the controller see other devices on the network)


Home Assistant server details.
The downloaded disk image was imported to virtual box using the instructions found here https://www.home-assistant.io/installation/windows#hypervisor-specific-configuration
Then the virtual machine was launched. Once the machine launched successfully we could see the home assistant instance at http://homeassistant.local:8123/. The rest of the setup process will be glossed over as this is not the core of the task.
We proceed to download the iOS mobile app for home assistant which will allow the server to access device sensor data.
We locate our HA server on the network
We allow access to location and pedometer sensor data, We allow access to notifications.


Below we see our home assistant web dashboard with access to the mobile device and its sensors.


Now our HA has been set up.
We can see that the Home Assistant mobile app can send notifications for when the gyrometer and accelerometer are out of normal operating range to signify a falling user.


Reference link: Documentation - Home Assistant (home-assistant.io)