How an IoT-enabled “smart refrigerator” can play a clandestine role in perpetuating cyber-crime

The need to interconnect devices over the Internet has led to the development of smart devices, home automation and the Internet of Things (IoT), which at the time of writing this paper is still an emerging phenomenon. As a result of IoT explosion, home appliances are able to be fully connected and controlled through an Intelligent Digital Network (IDN). Nevertheless, futuristic refrigerators will be able to connect to the Internet, which in turn will be able to accept a number of applications. While this brings effectiveness and convenience of connecting household appliances to the Internet, the threat level that is posed by interconnecting these appliances is high because a number of vulnerabilities exist that have potential to be exploited. In this paper, the authors show how a “smart refrigerator” can be used as an instrument that is able to propagate digital crimes like identity theft, spamming, privacy, data loss and so forth through creation of IoT bot. IoT bot is a robot network that can target connected multimedia centres. As a result, the authors have proposed a Smart Refrigerator Crime Propagation (SRCP) Model that shows how vulnerabilities are able to be exploited. Additionally, the authors have identified possible countermeasures as a route that can help to protect sensitive and critical information in an IoT-based environment. The proposed approaches/countermeasures have digital forensic capabilities that are able to filter periodic communication to and from the refrigerator in a forensic readiness approach. It is the authors' opinion that if the approaches are adhered to fully they may help to proactively prevent propagation of IoT-based digital crimes using connected home appliances.