An Analysis of Amazon Echo's Network Behavior

TL;DR

This paper investigates the network communication protocols of Amazon Echo devices, revealing their security features, protocol details, and identifying minor shortcomings in device pairing.

Contribution

It provides a detailed analysis of Amazon Echo's network behavior, decrypts communication protocols, and evaluates security aspects, which was previously underexplored.

Findings

Drop-in calls are end-to-end encrypted and based on open standards.

Minor shortcoming identified in the device pairing protocol.

Overall, Echo devices are well-designed from a network security perspective.

Abstract

With over 20 million units sold since 2015, Amazon Echo, the Alexa-enabled smart speaker developed by Amazon, is probably one of the most widely deployed Internet of Things consumer devices. Despite the very large installed base, surprisingly little is known about the device's network behavior. We modify a first generation Echo device, decrypt its communication with Amazon cloud, and analyze the device pairing, Alexa Voice Service, and drop-in calling protocols. We also describe our methodology and the experimental setup. We find a minor shortcoming in the device pairing protocol and learn that drop-in calls are end-to-end encrypted and based on modern open standards. Overall, we find the Echo to be a well-designed device from the network communication perspective.