With ZigBee being the world’s leading IoT protocol, users are vulnerable to attacks on the wireless communication between ZigBee devices and the information that can be gained from them. For users to protect themselves from potential attacks they need to be aware of what information can be extracted and how it can be countered.

Through an eavesdropping experiment, done using three individual sensors from different vendors, various packets with potential for misuse have been identified within the area of building security. With the potential areas of misuse identified, there is also a need for countermeasures against these threats. Countermeasures were identified through a collection of literature that was summarized in order to provide a wide range of alternatives, suitable to different scenarios. The experiment was limited to the functions of the sensors used, as well as traffic using the ZigBee protocol.

This study pinpoints a potential for misuse of the ZigBee traffic sent between devices and shows that the ZigBee protocol is fundamentally flawed from a security aspect. Whilst countermeasures exist, they are not applicable to every situation which is why the ZigBee protocol itself needs further development to be considered secure.