The “Internet of Things” offers all sorts of interesting possibilities, from virtually checking your fridge through your phone while at the grocery store all the way to integration with smart city grids. There’s one huge stumbling block to success, however. As the recent hacking attacks on services like Twitter and Reddit indicate, the security of the Internet of Things is not being taken seriously enough.
Most of these devices offer little threat if someone takes control of them. The primary issue is the fact that their internal computing ability is enough to make requests of websites, an ability that an attacker can use maliciously. For example, in the October attack, a “botnet” made up mostly of unsecured “smart devices” was used to simply flood one of the backbones of the internet with junk traffic, keeping legitimate traffic from accessing the sites hosted there.
Many smart devices are currently shipping with either no password protection whatsoever or a default password that cannot be changed. When users are able to set their own passwords, they sometimes don’t take these devices as seriously as they do computers, picking a very simple and weak password that is easy for a “brute force” hacking attack to crack by simply trying entries from a password list over and over.
People may think, “Who cares if a hacker gets access to my DVR or toaster? Why would they even bother?” The October attack shows why — any device that can connect to the internet and connect to websites is a potential weapon.
Manufacturers of these devices should take this as a warning to begin implementing much stronger security settings, as should end users to take anything connected to the internet more seriously.
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