They were supposed to be smart. But it turns out that smart devices—the web-connected gadgets that can monitor and control our lights, our locks, our boilers, and even our cars—have a lot to learn.The evidence lies in hacked babycams, compromised braking and steering systems, and, most recently, security cameras that were hijacked to cripple websites with bogus traffic.
Experts say that many connected devices, which make up the growing Internet of Things, or IoT, are putting consumers’ privacy at risk.
Source: Internet of Things Companies Security Mess | Consumer Reports
A growing mass of poorly secured devices on the Internet of things represents a serious risk to life and property, and the government must intervene to mitigate it. That’s essentially the message that prominent computer security experts recently delivered to Congress.The huge denial-of-service attack in October that crippled the Internet infrastructure provider Dyn and knocked out much of the Web for users in the eastern United States was “benign,” Bruce Schneier, a renowned security scholar and lecturer on public policy at Harvard, said during a hearing last month held by the House Energy and Commerce Committee. No one died. But he said the attack—which relied on a botnet made of hacked webcams, camcorders, baby monitors, and other devices—illustrated the “catastrophic risks” posed by the proliferation of insecure things on the Internet.
