3 ms·
What I find even scarier is that, with computers and mobile devices, at least someone might notice when they're running slower than usual or consuming more data
by kijin 10y ago
What I find even scarier is that, with computers and mobile devices, at least someone might notice when they're running slower than usual or consuming more data than usual. Most people have at least heard of computer viruses, and antivirus vendors have been trying pretty hard to get their crap on Android phones as well.
But would you notice if your thermostat was running a little slower than usual? Would it even occur to anyone that their dishwasher might have caught a virus? These things could participate in DDoS attacks all year long and nobody would suspect a thing. And even if someone did, fixing them would be much more difficult than taking your laptop to the nearest Best Buy (or even impossible, thanks to DRM).
- foepys 10y agoI can also imagine that the microchips and their connected components wear out faster because they are under high load and therefore become hotter than usual. So after a few months your fridge is mysteriously dead just because of malware and you won't even know about it.
- manarth 10y agoImagine an army of fridge-hosted bitcoin miners…it'd be extraordinarily inefficient, but the bot-herders wouldn't care about the electricity bill.
- ssharp 10y agoAre there consumer routers (that are relatively easy to use) that can alert you or shut down a device, when all of a sudden your thermostat is making tons of network requests?
- kijin 10y agoThere are routers that can control how much data a given downstream device can transfer in a given time, shut them down entirely during certain times of day, etc. But then I'd guess the crooks will just compromise the router itself.
- manarth 10y agoAnd the average IOT user is unlikely to understand the security implications and correctly configure the router.
- catdog 10y agoWe first need consumer routers which are not themselves that device on a regular basis before we can think of detecting misbehavior in other devices.