Master Thesis Proposal

1 Problem Statement

Xiaomi is a market leader in Internet-of-Things (IoT) and Smart Home devices. They release smart products such as wearables (wristbands, watches), sensors (humidity, temperature, motion), lightbulbs, home control hubs, doorbells, robot vacuum cleaners, and even electric scooters. These devices communicate over Bluetooth Low Energy with a mobile companion app called Mi Home. They use Xiaomi proprietary protocols to pair with each other and to communicate orders (turn on/off). Several of these custom application-layer protocols have been shown to be vulnerable [1, 2, 3], leading to security and privacy issues. These attack, and their underlying vulnerabilities, affect millions of Xiaomi users and are applicable to any device using that protocols, including future releases. Therefore, performing a security and privacy evaluation of the Xiaomi Smart Home ecosystem is critical to protect these users and making them realize whether their devices could be breached.

2 Project Plan

1. Literature review: You will read prior attacks on Xiaomi IoT ecosystem (smartbands and electric scooters) and understand the methodology and attacks that threaten it. You learn about Xiaomi proprietary protocols, Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE), and Android.
2. Security and privacy evaluation: You will pick a BLE-enabled Xiaomi smart home device and study its attack surface. You will reverse-engineer Xiaomi proprietary protocols transported over BLE, and impersonate the Mi Home app and/or the device. Analyze the targeted platform’s functionality and security measures.
3. Attacks, vulnerabilities, and evaluation: You will design, implement, deploy attacks on real Xiaomi devices.
4. Evaluation and countermeasures: You will formalize the vulnerabilities enabling the proposed attacks. You will provide countermeasures that fix the attacks.

3 Ideal Background

You are interested in IoT security and privacy. This project builds upon research works authored by the supervisor (Marco Casagrande). You will have a chance to test your skills, add an impactful project to your CV, learn state-of-the-art reverse-engineering and protocol analysis techniques, and break real IoT devices. Relevant Skills. Proficiency in programming and scripting languages, such as Python, Java, and JavaScript. Basic knowledge of security and privacy, wireless networks, and IoT. Optionally, experience with BLE, reverse-engineering, and Android.

4 Thesis Supervisor

Marco Casagrande is a postdoc in cybersecurity at Orebro University. He specializes in Android security and reverse engineering. He is passionate about hands-on, hacking-oriented research. In addition to his academic publications, he has been invited to speak at several prominent hacking conferences, including Black Hat USA, DEF CON, and Hardwear.io. He is deeply involved in bug hunting, reporting vulnerabilities to market leaders such as Google, Xiaomi, and the FIDO Alliance.

References

[1] Marco Casagrande et al. “BreakMi: Reversing, Exploiting and Fixing Xiaomi Fitness Tracking Ecosystem”. In: IACR Transactions on Cryptographic Hardware and Embedded Systems 2022.3 (2022), pp. 330–366.
[2] Marco Casagrande et al. “E-Spoofer: Attacking and Defending Xiaomi Electric Scooter Ecosystem”. In: Proceedings of the 16th ACM Conference on
Security and Privacy in Wireless and Mobile Networks. WiSec ’23. New
York, NY, USA: Association for Computing Machinery, 2023, pp. 85–95.
[3] Marco Casagrande and Daniele Antonioli. E-Trojans: Ransomware, Tracking, DoS, and Data Leaks on Xiaomi Electric Scooters. 2025.