Wednesday, September 06, 2017

How safe is your connected home?

Security experts are both thrilled and anxious about the internet of things (IoT), the ever-growing collection of smart electronic gadgets that interact with the world around them. It includes devices like internet-connected garage door openers, refrigerators you can text to see if you’re low on milk and tennis rackets that offer tips on a better backhand — even smart sex toys. The technology research firm Gartner estimates that 6.4 billion such IoT devices were connected online in 2016, and that number doesn’t include smartphones, tablets or laptops.

But buyer beware: Smart devices prize convenience and novelty, not security. “The challenge with IoT is that the market is so enthusiastic right now — connected devices are super cool,” says Ted Harrington, a San Diego-based partner at Independent Security Evaluators, the company that first hacked an iPhone in 2007. “The problem is that this enthusiasm is really overshadowing the security challenges.”

On Oct. 21, 2016, those challenges burst out of the shadows. Three times that day, hackers launched attacks against Dyn, a company that reads the URL you type in a web browser and directs you to a webpage — a kind of digital phone book. The onslaught persisted for six hours, blocking or slowing access to dozens of prominent websites. This type of event is known as a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack, which means so many devices sent simultaneous requests that Dyn’s system was overwhelmed and broke down. It was the largest attack of its kind in history, but it won’t be the last. Full story...

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  6. Google eavesdropping tool installed on computers without permission...
  7. The whole POINT of the internet of things is so Big Brother can spy on you...

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