Am I Infected? Lessons from Operating a Large-Scale IoT Security Diagnostic Service

Takayuki Sasaki, Tomoya Inazawa, Youhei Yamaguchi, Simon Parkin, Michel van Eeten, Katsunari Yoshioka, Tsutomu Matsumoto

34th USENIX Security Symposium · Day 1

The proliferation of Internet of Things (IoT) devices in homes has introduced a significant security challenge: users are often ill-equipped to secure these devices, lacking both the information and the technical expertise to do so effectively. This paper, "Am I Infected? Lessons from Operating a Large-Scale IoT Security Diagnostic Service," presents a comprehensive study of a novel web service designed to address this gap. Launched in February 2022 by researchers from Yokohama National University and Delft University of Technology, the service, aptly named "am I infected?", offers Japanese users a free, accessible platform to diagnose vulnerabilities and malware infections in their home IoT devices.

AI review

Solid empirical work with real operational data from 114k users over 27 months. The remediation rates (88% malware, 50% vulns) are the money shot—actual evidence that user-initiated diagnostics can work. Not groundbreaking technically, but the scale and longitudinal nature make it genuinely useful for anyone building consumer security tooling.