Home and Small Office Network Device Audit on a Raspberry Pi

The problem: cheap connected devices nobody looks after

Homes and small offices now hold more connected devices than computers: CCTV cameras and recorders, smart TVs, Wi-Fi plugs, printers, the internet provider's router. In Pakistan, low-cost camera systems in shops, clinics and homes are everywhere, often installed by a technician who leaves the default password and opens remote viewing to the internet. Nobody updates the firmware afterwards.

These devices get hijacked into botnets, leak camera feeds, or give an attacker a foothold on the same network as the office accounts PC. The owners have no idea, and no tool designed for them to find out.

What already exists and the gap

• Nmap and other network scanners find devices and open ports, but expect an expert to interpret results.
• IoT Inspector, from Princeton and later NYU researchers, is open source software that lets users observe traffic from smart home devices on their own network.
• Router apps and some antivirus suites offer basic network scans, usually tied to one vendor.
• Fing and similar apps list devices and offer some security checks.

The gap is a cheap, always-on box with checks chosen for the devices common in South Asian homes and small businesses (DVR and NVR camera systems, ISP routers, smart plugs), producing advice a shop owner can act on.

Inspiration

"IoT Inspector: Crowdsourcing Labeled Network Traffic from Smart Home Devices at Scale" by Danny Yuxing Huang, Noah Apthorpe, Gunes Acar, Frank Li and Nick Feamster (IMWUT 2020) collected traffic from 44,956 smart home devices across thousands of volunteer homes and found many vendors using outdated TLS and weak ciphers. This project brings a smaller, action-focused version to people who would never install research software themselves.

What you build

• Owners plug in the box, open a page on their phone and see a list of devices, each with a green, amber or red status and a short explanation.
• Technicians and IT helpers get the detailed findings to fix several sites quickly.
• Everyone gets a weekly message when a new device appears or something changes.

The technically interesting part

• Discovery and naming. Turn a list of IP and MAC addresses into "Hikvision-style camera recorder" or "Android TV" using vendor prefixes, open services and discovery protocols such as mDNS and UPnP.
• Checks that are safe. Scanning must not crash fragile devices. Use gentle rates, and limit credential checks to a handful of known defaults on devices the owner has confirmed are theirs.
• Checking exposure from outside. Detect UPnP port forwards and admin interfaces reachable from the internet by reading the router's UPnP table and, with permission, an external check.
• Writing for non-experts. The report is the product. Each finding needs one sentence of risk and one concrete fix, tested with real users.
• Change detection. A new device that appears at 3 a.m., or a camera that suddenly opens a new port, is worth a message. Keep a history of each device's state and report differences, not the whole list each week.
• Running on small hardware. The Pi must scan, store history and serve the web page without slowing the network. Schedule heavy scans at quiet times and measure CPU and bandwidth use.

How to evaluate it

• Lab network: set up a few devices with known problems (an old router, a camera with default password) and measure detection.
• Real sites: with consent, run in five homes or small offices and record findings and what owners fixed.
• Safety: no device crashes or slows noticeably during scans.
• Clarity: owners can explain what a finding means after reading the report.

Suggested plan

• Weeks 1 to 3: Raspberry Pi setup, Nmap and Scapy basics on a home lab with two or three old devices.
• Weeks 4 to 7: discovery, device naming and service checks.
• Weeks 8 to 10: router and exposure checks, report and web page.
• Weeks 11 to 14: field tests, fixes and documentation.
• Week 15: demo and report.

Who it is for, concretely

Picture a pharmacy with a four-camera recorder, a shared Wi-Fi router from the internet provider and two billing PCs, or a family with a smart TV, a few phones and a Wi-Fi doorbell. Neither has an IT person. The box should give each of them three or four clear actions, not a hundred lines of scan output.

Path to a product

Internet providers and CCTV installers could bundle such a box or offer a check as a service. A hosted dashboard for technicians who manage many small sites, with the box as cheap hardware, is a realistic small business.

Scope warning

Scan only networks you own or have written permission to test, and keep credential checks to confirmed devices. Do not try to build an intrusion detection system as well; stay focused on discovery, exposure and clear advice.

Learn what you need on Sefism

• Network engineering roadmap: addressing, ports and how home networks work.
• Network engineering cheat sheet: protocols such as ARP, UPnP and DHCP.
• Cybersecurity roadmap: scanning and vulnerability assessment.
• Embedded systems and IoT roadmap: how connected devices are built and updated.
• Kali Linux Documentation: network tools you will use on the Pi.

Get help with this idea

This is a good first security project if you keep it focused. Tauseef can help you choose the checks, plan safe field tests and make the report readable for non-technical owners. If you are new here, create a free account first.

• Discuss this idea with a mentor
• Send a query to Tauseef
• Book a 1:1 session