Bruce Schneier on the coming IoT security dumpster-fire

Originally published at: http://boingboing.net/2016/07/25/bruce-schneier-on-the-coming-i.html

4 Likes

How long before the NON smart, NON IoT versions aren’t available?

7 Likes

I predict never. There’s a negative feedback loop in play:

  • More smart coffee pots
  • Filled with Russian viruses
  • They rebel against their human masters
  • You learn how to boil water

Q.E.D.

10 Likes

I await the dumpster-fire dumpster-fire dumpster-fire.

13 Likes

It’s dumpster fires all the way down…

11 Likes

off topic, but are dumpster fires universally bad?

4 Likes

When you quit buying them?

3 Likes

The article is good, though it doesn’t really have anything new for BoingBoing readers. But it’s a great non-technical introduction. Mail it to your elected representatives - especially if they know your name!

Is that in an Internet connected dumpster?

6 Likes

when Simple Human releases an IoT trashcan, we’ll have Kitchen-Trashcan-Fire

4 Likes

The thermostat is interesting. What happens when utility companies get in the malware game in order to squeeze their customers for a bit more cash?

6 Likes

They don’t really need malware, just DRM. They need you to not have an audit trail that you can prove you didn’t use what they are billing you for.

7 Likes

Along the same lines: how long before you can’t buy a new house/get housing without all this crap built in, once builders and landlords see it as a sales advantage?

6 Likes

Whenever I see a headline about the “coming wave of IoT!” I think about the sorts of things you’d see in an OMNI magazine twenty years later and just giggle at. “Steve Wozniak on the coming 2400-baud modem security dumpster fire!”

5 Likes

What happens if an unscrupulous supermarket gets into the game (or is compromised and gets into the game involuntarily?) One feature that might be useful for an internet-connected refrigerator would be to order groceries online when you run low or out of something. These groceries could be be delivered through systems like Peapod, Walmart Grocery, or one of the other 17.2 million hits on Google for “online grocery delivery.” In order to do so, though, it would need to charge those groceries to your account.

Also picture the possibility for theft. If you know someone has an IoT fridge and is away, attack the fridge and have it order (expensive) groceries to be delivered immediately for the attacker to pick up from the doorstep and resell at a fraction of the actual price. This would be particularly effective if the fridge (or other IoT-enabled device like the clothes washer or even a cat’s litter box) could order high-end personal care products or pet supplies, things that have a long or indefinite shelf life.

1 Like

7 Likes

cory really needs a new adjective to describe clusterfucks.

6 Likes

Related listening, one of the stories discusses the stock market crash caused by computers hyper trading. The data behind the cause is so complex that analysts don’t believe it will be understood by humans. Entertainment portrays machines vs humans as a struggle with themes of vengeance, morals, and war. In actuality, it will be billions of random benign decisions made in a nonosecond that will wipe us all out.

3 Likes

You can have my vintage Sunbeam waffle iron when you pry it from my burned, dead hands.

8 Likes

s’okay lots of us will never be able to afford one.

10 Likes