We have discussed the connected car market in previous blogs. The Smart Home - with multiple IoT devices, mobile apps, APIs, and a rapidly evolving ecosystem - is shaping up to look quite similar to the world of connected cars. The bad news is that if we are not careful, the proliferation of apps and APIs could open up opportunities for hackers.
Connected Smart Homes - What Could Possibly Go Wrong?
Smart refrigerators that track inventory, smart ovens that can preheat remotely, smart washing machines that suggest wash cycles and smart thermostats that learn user preferences. Security cameras, thermostats, lighting controls and a multitude of appliances and devices are now connected, integrated and can be controlled conveniently and remotely… from a mobile app of course. Smart Home technology offers automation, control and convenience to the modern lifestyle.
As Smart Home devices become more prevalent, they unfortunately also become more attractive targets for cyberattacks. Malicious actors exploit vulnerabilities in these interconnected systems to gain unauthorized access, compromise personal data, and even manipulate physical devices within the home.
There is a gray area too: competitors can also scrape your data and use it to propose new services or replacement appliances. The information that my dishwasher is old and has a troubled service history may be very useful to a competitor who wants to replace it.
Mobile apps bring convenience to the Smart Home, but by their very nature, also open up an entry point for hackers into the whole ecosystem - unless security measures are put in place.
Key Players in The Smart Home Ecosystem
Lets look first at the classification of the types of players in the Smart Home ecosystem.
Device & Appliance Vendors
These companies manufacture smart hardware devices. These include consumer electronics and appliance makers like LG, Samsung, and Bosch, home climate companies like Nest and Honeywell, lighting companies like Philips and security vendors like Arlo and Ring. They invariably have a dedicated device-specific app, often support emerging interop standards like Matter, and rely on third-party platforms for deeper integration.
Protocol & API Brokers
These players provide the interoperability “glue” that allows devices to talk to each other. They bridge vendor ecosystems through APIs, SDKs, or open standards enabling cross-vendor automation. For example, Matter is an open protocol led by CSA (Apple, Google, Amazon) and Tuya Smart is a white-label smart device platform/API broker for OEMs. Often, these are cloud-based or SDK-based integration hubs which abstract away device differences.
Home Automation & Orchestration Platforms
These companies provide unified control and automation logic, often via mobile apps or hubs. Google Home, Amazon Alexa, Apple HomeKit, Samsung SmartThings are all examples. These solutions provide unified control over devices from many vendors and often integrate voice assistants and mobile apps.
Some of the players in this category also offer APIs to developers who want to develop enhanced services and apps using home device information. Some of these (eg Tuya Smart or Home Assistant) apply a model similar to the way companies such as Smartcar operate in the connected car market - they provide dev-friendly APIs providing access to many vendors' devices and apply a user-permission model to connect them, independent of whether the device vendors officially "authorize" sharing data to the service accessing the devices. Google for example, has recently launched its Home APIs, offering developers access to over 600 million devices.
Mobile App Providers & Dashboards
Most smart homes are controlled day-to-day through mobile apps. Device makers have their own branded apps and so do the orchestration platforms. Finally there is another category of apps built on top of published APIs, providing “vendor agnostic” control or some specialist service or dashboard. Examples of these are openHAB and Homey UX.
Cloud Infrastructure
The cloud vendors are active too, aiming to power the backend for smart homes. All of the cloud vendors have a targeted offering, including AWS IoT Core, Azure IoT Hub, Google Cloud IoT. These all provide cloud services, data storage and telemetry and messaging queues, as well as providing more APIs for external integrations and dashboards.
Security Vendors
For completeness, there is also an emerging class of specialized Security & Privacy vendors who focus on identity, access control, data encryption, and API protection. Octa and Cloudflare would fall into this category as would Approov for its role in protecting Smart Home APIs from unauthorized devices, bots, or fake apps.
Mobile Apps and APIs are the Building Blocks for Smart Homes
The Proliferation of Smart Home Mobile Apps
As we mentioned, every single smart home device has a companion mobile app for onboarding, remote control as well as managing firmware updates.
Then there are "smart home apps" like Amazon Alexa, Google Home, Samsung SmartThings, and Apple Home, as well as apps for a multitude of other specialized services. All these are accessing data via a network of APIs.
Generally, mobile apps handle authentication and identity, often serving as identity brokers between services. They can also serve as a proxy to device APIs, aggregating data and alerts.
The Role of APIs in the Smart Home
There are many APIs in the Smart Home ecosystem, playing many different roles:
- There are vendor specific APIs published by device manufacturers to control or read data from their own products (Philips Hue API, Ecobee API, Samsung SmartThings)
- Security systems have APIs (Ring API, Arlo API) which focus on cameras, doorbells and monitoring
- There are platform APIs (Matter, Apple HomeKit API, Google Home API, Alexa Smart Home Skill API) which power centralized Smart Home platforms and allow third-party devices and apps to integrate into larger ecosystems.
- There are also APIs for interoperability or automation (eg IFTTT, Zigbee2MQTT, OCF, Z-Wave)
Data Breaches are the Least of Your Worries
You should be worried about breaches, but even worse things can happen. Cyber threats which weaponize the mobile apps that control home appliances include:
- Data breaches: Hackers can access personal information like user credentials, appliance usage patterns, and location data stored on the app or cloud.
- Device hijacking: Taking complete control of an appliance through the app, allowing malicious actions like turning on appliances at inappropriate times or adjusting settings without authorization.
- Man-in-the-middle attacks: Intercepting communication between the app and appliance to manipulate data and gain unauthorized control.
- Ransomware attacks: Encrypting appliance data and demanding a ransom to regain access.
- Botnet creation: Using compromised appliances as part of a larger network to launch distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks on cloud services or APIs.
- Privacy concerns: Excessive data collection by the app without user consent, potentially allowing for profiling and targeted advertising.
The Specific Challenges of the Combination of Apps and APIs in The Smart Home
The Smart Home ecosystem is built on a powerful but inherently dangerous foundation: mobile apps acting as remote control interfaces for APIs that manage real-world devices. From unlocking doors to disabling alarms and adjusting HVAC systems, APIs now control highly sensitive operations — and the only gatekeeper is often a mobile app running in a completely untrusted environment.
This creates a toxic combination:
- Mobile apps can be cloned, tampered with, or run on compromised devices
- APIs can be reverse-engineered and invoked by bots or fake clients
- Attackers can easily automate abuse at scale once app-to-API traffic is understood
Traditional perimeter defenses and static code protections (like obfuscation) are no match for dynamic, runtime attackers who use emulators, hooking tools, or AI-assisted reverse engineering.
Attackers do not target only one attack surface. They will often seek useful information from one and then use that to target another in a systematic way using automated tools.
Here are some of the common issues which hackers exploit:
- Lack of App Attestation: APIs accept requests from any app mimicking a real one (e.g., reverse-engineered clients, bots, unauthorized apps scraping data)
- Repackaged or Tampered Apps: Malicious actors inject tracking or override logic into modified versions of official apps
- No Detection of Rooted/Jailbroken Devices: Apps run unprotected on compromised environments with escalated privileges
- Bypass of Obfuscation: Attackers use tools like Frida or JADX to reverse-engineer code, especially if only basic obfuscation is used
- API Keys Hardcoded in the APK/IPA: Many apps embed API keys for the APIs and cloud services they use directly in code, which can be trivially extracted
- Embedded OAuth Tokens: Some apps store bearer tokens in plaintext, enabling token replay or unauthorized access
- Static TLS Certificate Pins: Certificate pins can become outdated, leading to failures — or removed entirely by attackers to enable MitM
These are just a few of the potential issues: We have a checklist to help you evaluate the security of your Smart Home apps and APIs: a full list of potential issues, each with the associated mitigation best-practice.
Securing the Toxic Combination of Smart Home APIs and Mobile Apps with a Zero Trust Model
As we have mentioned, traditional perimeter defenses and static code protections (like obfuscation) are no match for dynamic, runtime attackers who use emulators, hooking tools, or AI-assisted reverse engineering.
To fix this, Smart Home platforms must adopt a Zero Trust security model — one that trusts nothing by default, not even a seemingly valid API call from an app. Instead, each and every API request must prove it originates from a legitimate, unmodified mobile app.
This requires a shift from static credentials and blind API trust to dynamic, cryptographic proof-of-integrity at runtime. Such a modern Zero Trust mobile security model enables:
- Per-request attestation: Every API call includes a short-lived, signed token (e.g., a JWT) proving the app is untampered and legitimate.
- API-side validation: The backend verifies the token cryptographically before executing any operation — like unlocking a smart lock or starting a camera.
- Device and environment checks: The system confirms that the app is not running in an emulator, debugger, or rooted/jailbroken OS.
- Secrets only delivered to trusted apps: No API keys or certificates are bundled in the app — they’re delivered at runtime only if integrity is verified.
By integrating these real-time validations, Smart Home providers can:
- Block fake or modified apps before they even reach the API
- Prevent automation tools from impersonating legitimate mobile clients
- Stop secrets from being extracted and reused
- Gain visibility into which apps, devices, and environments are accessing their APIs — and which are not trusted
In conclusion it is actually very simple: If you have APIs you must protect them from unauthorized access and if you publish a mobile app you must prevent it from leaking useful information or being weaponized to target APIs.
The good news is putting in place a Zero Trust transaction-level attestation solution can solve both issues.
Approov and Smart Home Security
Approov Mobile Security ensures only authorized apps can access APIs by validating the legitimacy of any request from the app after continuous deep inspection of the app and device. Approov protects appliance and automation APIs and allows API owners immediate and dynamic control over who and what gets access, simply by inspecting a standard JWT token in each request.
This also prevents bots from creating fake accounts, generating content, and scraping data.
It also reduces cloud costs, minimizes operational distractions, and protects the brand’s reputation.
With Approov you can update what apps have access to your APIs and turn this access on or off anytime. Security policies, certificates and keys can also be updated at any time without requiring your users to update their mobile apps. Finally, updates are also made over the air to be able to combat the latest threats as well as recently discovered zero day vulnerabilities.
If you need to regain control over what is accessing your Smart Home APIs and protect your Smart Home apps, talk to Approov.
