8 replies to this topic

[Mike L]

I thought I would share a project that I am working on that might be of interest to the rest of the group.

I am working on building out some content for a hacknight that the Charlotte Alt.Net group is having in December. The idea is that I will have 10 to 12 Netduino Plus devices that will be distributed to all attendees. The attendees will be tasked with completing a security system in which each Netduino device plays a specific role in the I/O of the system. The Netduinos will communicate using a MQTT Message Bus that is deployed to a Windows Azure Worker Role. The brains of the security system will be deployed to a Windows Azure Web role. This web role will also provide a dashboard page that shows the status of the system. I am providing the complete code for the brains, MQTT communication and the dashboard. The attendees will have to complete the code on the Netduino devices (although I will have that completed as well if they run into trouble).

The goals of the hacknight will be to give them exposure to Netduino's, Internet of Things and Windows Azure.

You can check out the web site that provides a little more detail about the project at Cloud Home Security. The are links to the source code from the web site.

This project is still a work in progress, but I have to give a shout out to Dan Thyer from Logical Advantage for helping me out on the code, hardware and hosting the event. Also thanks goes out to Chris Walker and Secret Labs for sponsoring the event.

Mike Linnen
@mlinnen
http://www.protosystem.net

[Patrick]

Sounds like an awesome time

[pounce]

Mike, This is actually one of the projects I had in mind when I posted: http://forums.netdui...04-or-the-like/ If you are interested I'd be willing to donate and drop ship a bunch of these: https://www.sparkfun.../products/11551 ..so you can incorporate them into your Azure auth and security model. I'd hope to leverage your work to support the chip and Azure to enable secure communication through Azure to and from Windows Phone 8 and Netduino. An example would be to take some sensor data from a Netduino to Azure and then pushed to WP8. Pushing back the other way to interact with an "authorized" device using an authenticated message would be the end goal. I'd be happy to drop ship you some chips you can leverage and gift out at your event if you feel like this is something you want to incorporate. Just PM me. Cheers

[Mike L]

Mike,

This is actually one of the projects I had in mind when I posted:

http://forums.netdui...04-or-the-like/

If you are interested I'd be willing to donate and drop ship a bunch of these:

https://www.sparkfun.../products/11551

..so you can incorporate them into your Azure auth and security model.

I actually have a discussion point in my talk about how this is typically a problem that has to be solved. Messages sent from and received by the device is typically insecure because it is difficult to do encryption on the device due to limited resources. I was going to point out you can solve this by adding a message bus bridge (i.e. a message broker on a PC in the home) and the devices communicate unsecured to the message broker in the home. The "in house" message broker would then secure the message and forward it on to the cloud. The "in house" message broker has some other advantages that are not related to security but I like to offer alternatives to a problem. One other solution to unsecured messages is to put in a VPN between the Home and the Cloud service.

It sounds like you have come up with a third way to solve the unsecured message problem and I would like to discuss it further to see how it might work end to end.

Thanks
Mike

[pounce]

Using message and transport security together is a good idea regardless of where the path between end points lives. This is especially true in a security system. You have a great learning project. Props to you for doing this kind of work. Unless your message content is a secret you are really only concerned with getting the message to the end point and ensuring that the message its self is the one that was sent from the authorized endpoint. Signing the message payload with an HMAC would be pretty good if you were using HTTP. I wonder if the N+2 can handle the HTTPS now. I'm hoping it can. The auth chip ensures a unique ID (that can be challenged) and can handle the HMAC signing. You can also store other keys on it etc if you want to do your own auth. A person really doesn't need to the chip to prototype the system. You can simulate. Later you can consider something like this to get closer to some real security.

[Mike L]

I just posted a video showing the devices all connected together. Check it out here

[Chris Walker]

Mike,

I just posted a video showing the devices all connected together. Check it out here

That is a seriously awesome project

I love all the detail you've put into it. Thanks for sharing this and hosting the event!

Chris

[Mike L]

Mike,


That is a seriously awesome project

I love all the detail you've put into it. Thanks for sharing this and hosting the event!

Chris

Thanks Chris!, it has been fun putting it all together.

[Mike L]

A few picks from the event:
Pictures