Playing With Danger: A Taxonomy and Evaluation of Threats to Smart Toys
Sharon Shasha, Moustafa Mahmoud, Mohammad Mannan, Amr Youssef

TL;DR
This paper introduces a threat classification framework for smart toys, evaluates eleven popular models, and reveals that many still pose significant security and privacy risks to children.
Contribution
It provides a novel taxonomy of threats specific to smart toys and offers a comprehensive evaluation methodology for assessing their security vulnerabilities.
Findings
Several toys expose children to multiple security threats.
Many smart toys have vulnerabilities allowing remote or physical attacks.
The framework aids in systematic security assessment of smart toys.
Abstract
Smart toys have captured an increasing share of the toy market, and are growing ubiquitous in households with children. Smart toys are a subset of Internet of Things (IoT) devices, containing sensors, actuators, and/or artificial intelligence capabilities. They frequently have internet connectivity, directly or indirectly through companion apps, and collect information about their users and environments. Recent studies have found security flaws in many smart toys that have led to serious privacy leaks, or allowed tracking a child's physical location. Some well-publicized discoveries of this nature have prompted actions from governments around the world to ban some of these toys. Compared to other IoT devices, smart toys pose unique risks because of their easily-vulnerable user base, and our work is intended to define these risks and assess a subset of toys against them. We provide a…
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