© Institute for Computer Sciences, Social Informatics and Telecommunications Engineering 2014 V.C.M. Leung et al. (Eds.): TridentCom 2014, LNICST 137, pp. 136–145, 2014. DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-13326-3_14 A Smart Home Network Simulation Testbed for Cybersecurity Experimentation Jizhou Tong 1 , Weiqing Sun 2() , and Lingfeng Wang 1 1 Department of EECS, The University of Toledo, Ohio, USA {jizhou.tong,lingfeng.wang}@utoledo.edu 2 Department of ET, The University of Toledo, Ohio, USA weiqing.sun@utoledo.edu Abstract. With the rapid development of smart home, it becomes essential to study techniques to safeguard the home area network (HAN) against various security attacks. In this paper, a smart home network simulation testbed has been developed for security research in this area. It is designed to feature high fidelity, cost-effectiveness and user-friendliness. The testbed enables users to specify the HAN network topology, communication protocols and appliances, as well as develop security mechanisms such as information flow tracking. For the evaluation purpose, two security mechanisms were implemented on the testbed and their effectiveness against attacks is studied using the developed testbed. Keywords: Smart Home Network Simulation Testbed · Home Area Network · Smart Home Security · Cyber Security 1 Introduction With the development of the Smart Grid and sophisticated network technologies, it is possible that intelligent information services can be enabled in a household environ- ment. Smart home provides high-quality services to the users by deploying smart devices in the home area network (HAN), through which the Smart Grid connects with the consumers. ZigBee is the most popular network protocol used in the HAN thus far, which is a specification for a suite of high level communication proto- cols used to create personal area networks built from small, low power digital radios [1], [2]. However, the problem of cyber security becomes more and more important as the home becomes smarter, because malicious attacks may bring a significant impact to the HAN environment. For instance, attackers may obtain the control authority of the smart home through a well-designed attack. Under this condition, he or she can con- trol all the appliances in the home, which may cause more serious consequences such as changing the room temperature or increasing the electricity consumption. Although the ZigBee protocol provides some security mechanisms, it is not sufficient to meet the security requirements of the smart home network. And advanced network security mechanisms should be deployed in the smart home network. In order to evaluate these