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Agreed. According to the summary text of the bill: This bill, beginning on January 1, 2020, would require a manufacturer of a connected device, as tho

by gh02t 8y ago

Agreed. According to the summary text of the bill: This bill, beginning on January 1, 2020, would require a manufacturer of a connected device, as those terms are defined, to equip the device with a reasonable security feature or features that are appropriate to the nature and function of the device, appropriate to the information it may collect, contain, or transmit, and designed to protect the device and any information contained therein from unauthorized access, destruction, use, modification, or disclosure, as specified. A better title would be "California to ban weak default passwords on devices." Edit: or "California to require more security features on internet-connected devices."

kevin_thibedeau 8y ago
That portion is pretty much toothless without any concrete definition of "reasonable". The password provisions have some merit though: Subject to all of the requirements of subdivision (a), if a connected device is equipped with a means for authentication outside a local area network, it shall be deemed a reasonable security feature under subdivision (a) if either of the following requirements are met: (1) The preprogrammed password is unique to each device manufactured. (2) The device contains a security feature that requires a user to generate a new means of authentication before access is granted to the device for the first time. Even this can be weaseled out of for most consumer IoT products as they aren't typically intended for direct access from outside the LAN.
- macspoofing 8y ago
  >The password provisions have some merit though Does it? The problem is that they defined a very specific solution to the problem they are trying to solve as comprising of either approach (1) or (2) ... what if there is some innovative third option that neither people here nor the regulators was creative enough to think of? Now you've killed a potential innovative market from developing. >Even this can be weaseled out of That's not 'weaseling out'. That's a real world example of an approach that is perfectly secure and would be hurt by this if a regulator interpreted the law as applying to the device in question.
  - tinus_hn 8y ago
    Your browser does not know the difference between your lan and the internet so any website you visit can instruct it to interact with websites on your lan. It’s nowhere near ‘perfectly secure’ to have weak security on the lan. Besides, having weak security on a network means one compromise leads to a lot more. That isn’t very ‘perfectly secure’ either.
- r00fus 8y ago
  > IoT products as they aren't typically intended for direct access from outside the LAN For "cloud-only IoT devices" this ban is clearly in effect.
  - kevin_thibedeau 8y ago
    Cloud only devices that push to a server are not covered.
vezycash 8y ago
>This bill, beginning on January 1, 2020, would require a manufacturer of a connected device, as those terms are defined, to equip the device with a reasonable security feature or features that are appropriate to the nature and function of the device, appropriate to the information it may collect, contain, or transmit, and designed to protect the device and any information contained therein from unauthorized access, destruction, use, modification, or disclosure, as specified. Quoted text are hard to read on HN. It's impossible to read without multiple horizontal scrolling both on PC an mobile. Just use the ">" symbol instead.
- mikeyouse 8y ago
  Yep, I've found that the carrot + " * " marks attached before the first letter and after the last period to italicize it are a good multi-platform solution for quoting: > This bill, beginning on January 1, 2020, would require a manufacturer of a connected device, as those terms are defined, to equip the device with a reasonable security feature or features that are appropriate to the nature and function of the device, appropriate to the information it may collect, contain, or transmit, and designed to protect the device and any information contained therein from unauthorized access, destruction, use, modification, or disclosure, as specified.
  - mistersquid 8y ago
    This symbol ^ is a "caret" (or a "circumflex accent"). This symbol > is a "greater-than sign" or a "right angle bracket". EDIT: added Unicode name for ^.
    - mikeyouse 8y ago
      Yep, good call..
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
nashashmi 8y ago
> A better title California requires manufacturers use better password security measures. But that is boring... so California bans manufacturers from setting weak passwords (this title creation job is hard enough for a technical person to do. journalists will have a more difficult time.)
dang 8y ago
OK, we'll use that. Thanks!

by gh02t 8y ago

kevin_thibedeau 8y ago

That portion is pretty much toothless without any concrete definition of "reasonable". The password provisions have some merit though: Subject to all of the requirements of subdivision (a), if a connected device is equipped with a means for authentication outside a local area network, it shall be deemed a reasonable security feature under subdivision (a) if either of the following requirements are met: (1) The preprogrammed password is unique to each device manufactured. (2) The device contains a security feature that requires a user to generate a new means of authentication before access is granted to the device for the first time. Even this can be weaseled out of for most consumer IoT products as they aren't typically intended for direct access from outside the LAN.

macspoofing 8y ago
>The password provisions have some merit though Does it? The problem is that they defined a very specific solution to the problem they are trying to solve as comprising of either approach (1) or (2) ... what if there is some innovative third option that neither people here nor the regulators was creative enough to think of? Now you've killed a potential innovative market from developing. >Even this can be weaseled out of That's not 'weaseling out'. That's a real world example of an approach that is perfectly secure and would be hurt by this if a regulator interpreted the law as applying to the device in question.
- tinus_hn 8y ago
  Your browser does not know the difference between your lan and the internet so any website you visit can instruct it to interact with websites on your lan. It’s nowhere near ‘perfectly secure’ to have weak security on the lan. Besides, having weak security on a network means one compromise leads to a lot more. That isn’t very ‘perfectly secure’ either.
r00fus 8y ago
> IoT products as they aren't typically intended for direct access from outside the LAN For "cloud-only IoT devices" this ban is clearly in effect.
- kevin_thibedeau 8y ago
  Cloud only devices that push to a server are not covered.

vezycash 8y ago

>This bill, beginning on January 1, 2020, would require a manufacturer of a connected device, as those terms are defined, to equip the device with a reasonable security feature or features that are appropriate to the nature and function of the device, appropriate to the information it may collect, contain, or transmit, and designed to protect the device and any information contained therein from unauthorized access, destruction, use, modification, or disclosure, as specified. Quoted text are hard to read on HN. It's impossible to read without multiple horizontal scrolling both on PC an mobile. Just use the ">" symbol instead.

mikeyouse 8y ago
Yep, I've found that the carrot + " * " marks attached before the first letter and after the last period to italicize it are a good multi-platform solution for quoting: > This bill, beginning on January 1, 2020, would require a manufacturer of a connected device, as those terms are defined, to equip the device with a reasonable security feature or features that are appropriate to the nature and function of the device, appropriate to the information it may collect, contain, or transmit, and designed to protect the device and any information contained therein from unauthorized access, destruction, use, modification, or disclosure, as specified.
- mistersquid 8y ago
  This symbol ^ is a "caret" (or a "circumflex accent"). This symbol > is a "greater-than sign" or a "right angle bracket". EDIT: added Unicode name for ^.
  - mikeyouse 8y ago
    Yep, good call..

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

nashashmi 8y ago

> A better title California requires manufacturers use better password security measures. But that is boring... so California bans manufacturers from setting weak passwords (this title creation job is hard enough for a technical person to do. journalists will have a more difficult time.)

dang 8y ago

OK, we'll use that. Thanks!