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ZigBee Security Assessment

ZigBee (802.15.4) is a relatively new protocol compared to Wi-Fi (802.11), but with low power consumption and long battery life it is ideal for Home Network Systems such as thermostats etc. The reason behind ZigBee devices being low power consuming because it work on very low frequency and have a fewer commands to send compared to Wi-Fi.

Since it's relatively new protocol and not much popular, there are fewer tools/ frameworks to test it. However some good software/ hardware are available. They can be purchased/ downloaded from respective sites.

Atmel RZ Raven USB Stick (hardware)
Atmel JTAGICE mkII On-Chip Programmer (hardware)
Atmel 100-mm to 50-mm JTAG standoff adapter (hardware)
50-mm male-to-male header (hardware)
AVR Studio for Windows (software, free)
KillerBee Firmware for the RZUSBSTICK (software, free)
A Windows host for programming the RZ Raven USB Stick (one-time operation)

Issues to be looked into ZigBee:
Similar to 802.11 ZigBee may also suffer from same issues, like encryption, key provisioning mechanism, authentication etc. ZigBee uses AES for encryption but how the keys are being provisioned can lead to defeat entire encryption purpose. Then how ZigBee devices being authenticated when they try to join a network.

KillerBee provides an excellent framework to do security assessment. Some of the tools are:
zbstumbler: for network discovery
zbdump: packet sniffer
zbreplay: packet replay
zbdsniff: sniffing packets

Though I have never personally worked on ZigBee, hoping to get my hands on shortly at it and documenting the findings.


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