Inspiration
The team was inspired by the terrifying story of a mother discovering her young daughter's web camera was being leaked to thousands of anonymous people.
What it does
Wi-Fido (a pun on "Wi-fi" and a traditional name for a four legged friend) is an all-in-one software and hardware solution to securing your home wireless network. Enhanced security of your network devices isn't just for enterprise offices - and you shouldn't need a whole IT department to understand it, either. Wi-Fido will monitor the network traffic in and out of your home and scale back traffic to devices that are transferring a lot of data out of your home - which may indicate a potential security vulnerability in a networked IoT (Internet of Things) device or an intruder attempting to make you the victim from the outside.
The main functionalities of the system derive from the following two distinct components:
The Wi-Fido hardware...
- Acts as a middle-man between a home's devices and the World Wide Web, keeping a user both informed and protected from external threats
- Detects considerably excessive packet data traffic on the network, identifying and TERMINATING the connection if necessary
- Allows for remote view and control of the home network's activities
The hardware of the Wi-Fido implementation
The Wi-Fido mobile application...
- Presents home internet security information in a clear, non-intimidating way - designed to encourage the user to take control of his or her own digital life
- Offers options for managing and controlling network attack mitigation, such as through denying access for a device or IP address on the network
- Allows the user to keep personal digital security in check by evaluating their own practices and habits
How we built it
This solution has two key components: a hardware network adapter and a mobile application, designed to work hand-in-hand to deliver a top-notch user friendly information security experience. The hardware network adapter is built on a Raspberry Pi Zero W, and serves as the bridge between the local network and the world wide web. The mobile application is built with Ionic, and consumes information from a Firebase API through Heroku.
Raspberry Pi serving as a packet dispatch
Challenges we ran into
One of the goals from the beginning of the project was to the create most realistic environment possible even though we were restricted with certain network restrictions. One of the biggest problems we ran into was setting up our Raspberry-Pi Zero W to act as an actual WiFi router that was connected to the internet for the purpose of retrieving the outgoing packets. Additionally, coming up with an appropriate system for storing and receiving the packets data for later analysis introduced some difficulties.
Accomplishments that we're proud of
We are extremely proud that all of the packets being used are 100% not simulated. The group was able to secure all of the live data coming from the devices that were set up behind our private network. We are also extremely proud of our mobile app that acts as a controller for the entire system.
What we learned
We learned how to network a variety of devices on a local network using a Raspberry Pi board as the primary interface. We all learned a lot more about how internet traffic is maintained on a local network and how that translates to communication with sites and servers on the world wide web.
Log in or sign up for Devpost to join the conversation.