Gaining insight into Z-Wave
Z-Wave is one of the popular protocols in wireless sensor networks and home automation, and operates on 908.42 MHz in US and 868.42 MHz in Europe. Z-Wave just like ZigBee supports mesh networking, which makes it secure against issues such as node failure.
It has been developed by Sigma Systems, which makes it a closed protocol compared to ZigBee and others. This is also one of the reasons that the security research initiative by the security community against Z-Wave is relatively less compared to other popular IoT protocols. There are also projects such as OpenZWave to provide an open source alternative; however, they are still in the very early stages.
Just like typical radio communication protocols, Z-Wave devices suffer from the same set of security issues. One of the most common vulnerabilities in Z-Wave devices is the lack of encryption in communication, which makes it vulnerable to attacks such as sensitive information transmission in clear text and replay...