Usable key agreement in home networks

With the rapid emergence of new home networking technologies and proliferation of devices that use them, innovation has focused on rich functionality and largely ignored the associated security threats. The heterogeneous set of home appliances, their varied communication mediums, the lack of any ubiquitous standard to manage the communication across these devices, and the lack of a skilled security administrator all pose significant new challenges in securing these networks. In this work, we identify security challenges and considerations that are unique to home networking and take a first step toward solving one of the key security issues-key establishment. We describe a simple, secure and user-friendly solution to handle the special case of a device rejoining its home network after a brief absence. Our approach serves as a basic building block to ensure security and privacy in a home network.