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That's exactly why it's a bad idea to use IoT on everything! Most companies working on this kind of product doesn't give a shit about security.
by jan_Sate 3y ago
That's exactly why it's a bad idea to use IoT on everything! Most companies working on this kind of product doesn't give a shit about security.
- Obscurity4340 3y agoJust nice to see it used against someone other than the little people for once
- huytersd 3y agoIt’s stealing from gas pump owners who are still very much the little people.
- mattgeo_j 3y agoLast I heard, gas station "owners" make such a minuscule amount of money from the gas pumps and really rely on what they sell
- jjkaczor 3y agoDepends on if it is a direct corporate owned location, or franchised - but yes, I would argue that it hits many of the average small/medium business owners. Things will be "interesting" over the next 10-20 with the switch to electrification - yet another entire sector that may no longer be viable for small/medium independent owners. (but, time marches on - we don't see many people lamenting the "buggy whip manufacturers" from days of old)
- asynchronous 3y agoI actually think electric is one thing that could be squarely profitable for the small guy- think a small lot with solar panels or micro hydro and a few charging stations invested for much less than the cost of a house.
- greendave 3y agoPeople often have an unrealistic notion of what solar can do. A single 50kW charger would require 125 400w panels minimum - around 3000 square feet of area - and still only be able to provide max current for a few hours of the day. And 50kW is still slower than most people will tolerate if they’re not at home/work.
- rtkwe 3y agoFast chargers pull huge amounts of electricity requiring significant electrical connections and infrastructure that's pretty expensive to build up. You could provide level 1 or 2 chargers maybe on a DIY but even a single fast charger is going to need a LOT of solar and batteries to provide round the clock service.
- TremendousJudge 3y agoAs other people mentioned, the money of owning a gas station comes mostly from the convenience store attached to it. This isn't going away, quite the opposite. "Fast" charging is quite slow by gas station standards, which means more time for the drivers to go in and shop.
- bluGill 3y agoSort of. Most people will charge at home, so there will be less of that style of store with chargers. Along highways and in busy rural areas you will still find them - for travelers and truckers, but overall there is less need. Though there is still need for a store close to home where I can get a bit of milk quick, my morning donuts, and all the other things. I hope such stores move closer to where people live - suburban people should experience the big city convenience of walking to such places and when they don't have a hope of competing for drivers they may as well move closer to where people live. (if zoning allows!)
- prmoustache 3y agoSome would argue they are complicit of a giant crime against humanity and environment.
- gottorf 3y agoI mean, it's not like the thieves were stealing gas to put it back in the ground.
- dahfizz 3y agoand stealing gasoline helps the situation?
- prmoustache 3y agoDid I write that?
- gowld 3y agoThe gas station owners aren't the criminals. The people who built suburbs are.
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- throw__away7391 3y agoPlease try to make substantive comments, not wild flames
- throw__away7391 3y agoCool, so theft is morally justified depending on whom is being stolen from. Also, burning 800 gallons of fuel will release over two tons of carbon into the atmosphere, but I guess we just blame the oil companies for that too. This is where we are at now, the ultimate luxury, everyone has complete moral immunity for life for absolutely anything they do so long as someone else has more money than them, never mind if they are in the top 10% of the world's wealthy overall.
- dahfizz 3y agoSeriously, it feels like all morality is situational now. People have no principles. Something as straightforward as "stealing is wrong" doesn't apply. "Stealing from people I don't like is fine".
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- ryandrake 3y agoNot that I agree that stealing is acceptable (it's not), but this is expected and what happens deep into class warfare when inequality skyrockets and hopelessness sets in. People do what they can to make a buck, and justify it as evening out a perceived imbalance. We should expect to see more and more of this as more and more economic gains are captured by the rich, squeezing more of the middle class into poverty.
- huytersd 3y agoThe massive wealth inequality has a role to play. People are willing to accept people having more money than them but 10 people owning 50% of the wealth while the rest are literally suffering through multiple jobs and still live paycheck to paycheck, that’s when people think of revolting. What we’re seeing now is the initial stages of a soft revolution where ideas are introduced to the larger public and reactions are gauged. Things aren’t bad enough for an actual revolution but these are the first signs of the growing discontent.
- JKCalhoun 3y agoThen they have cause to sue the bastards that sold them the pump equipment.
- justrealist 3y agoSociety actually works a lot better if every possible way to steal from your neighbor isn't considered fair game.
- JKCalhoun 3y agoAt what point is it negligence on the part of the manufacturer?
- justrealist 3y agoSociety works better if every exploitable loophole is not considered a valid excuse to steal from your neighbor.
- Dylan16807 3y agoYou're talking past each other.
- justrealist 3y agoThrough, not past.
- Dylan16807 3y agoI have no idea what that means. Unless you mean "talking through" in the sense of teaching a lesson, because you're not. Your argument does not invalidate what they are saying, or bring any notable information to light. You merely started a waste-of-time tangent. Theft bad, everyone knows that.
- networkchad 3y agoMost of these stations are owner-operated. They usually aren’t owned by BigCo.
- thsksbd 3y agoI understand you're sentiment, however, never mind the fact that gas station owners are barely scraping by, theft is theft. We cannot win by debating ourselves because instead of dismantling the security state (that's what iot is), the result will be a doubling down (secure iot, install backdoors, take registration, etc)
- mdip 3y agoI used to know a family who ran a gas station in my city. I was surprised to learn they made almost nothing from the sale of fuel. The actual profit -- to them -- was in the convenience store goods they sold. I'm not sure who eats the cost of the theft, but I'm guessing it's the same people that make almost no money from the sale of the fuel. These were not wealthy people; they were working obscene hours and barely scraping by.
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- gs17 3y agoFor anyone interested, Freakonomics has an "Economics of Everyday Things" podcast with a good episode on gas stations: https://freakonomics.com/podcast/gas-stations/ https://freakonomics.com/podcast/gas-stations/ They said they get $0.30 per gallon which mostly goes toward the other overhead, leaving $0.07 of profit per gallon.
- 1234letshaveatw 3y agoSuper nice to see. I am so looking forward to living in a society that continues to devolve to the point that thievery is generally accepted. Oh btw, give me your wallet
- tgv 3y agoThe thought behind it might be: perhaps now someone with influence will pay attention. At least, that was my interpretation.
- jacquesm 3y agoGas stations - especially in rural areas - are usually hanging by a very thin thread and if they go bust they leave the area underserved. I don't know what your definition for 'little people' is but gas station owners would definitely qualify in my reading of that term. They tend to make less than minimum wage. If they make any money at all it is usually from store items, and that's one of the reasons 'pump then pay' is a thing in those places, it is an attempt to get the customer into the store.
- ChrisClark 3y agoIoT, the S stands for security.
- checker 3y agoAnd the I stands for Internet. I guess we're considering local BT networks to be "the internet" now. Perhaps the BT connection bridged the device to the internet, but we have no indication of that and the internet was used as the vector. It could have been a local wireless software update interface so maintenance doesn't have to open up each pump to apply the patch.
- mdip 3y agoYou're mostly right. I think several do give a shit about security but they both lack the knowledge of what it takes to reasonably secure something like this and are somewhat powerless/misled into believing they don't need to care. The first problem is that companies that add wireless/IoT capabilities to devices have nothing to do with their implementation/security beyond writing a cheque. I used to work for a company that created IoT devices for huge brands[0]. They make a toothbrush, a lightbulb or a vacuum cleaner. They're good at that, but they bring in someone else to either "wholesale create an IoT product" or collaborate on its creation where the "IoT pieces" (and their security) were farmed out to us. Of course, we didn't have much to do with the creation of the product, either. We (frequently) used a white-label Chinese product -- often, but not always, explicitly chosen by the manufacturer. In fact, the large brands often insist on a specific Chinese provider for long-term maintenance/cost savings[1]. We receive a "dev board" and device that consists of an ESP8266/ESP32 bolted onto whatever it's IoT-ing, and a cloud service (hosted in the country of origin; almost always China). The developers involved write a mobile app and some firmware that interacts with the cloud web service -- which we have no control over/cannot work around or suggest additional security layers -- and we integrate it. It creates an impenetrable SEP field[2]. Companies who care about security care about it up to some industry defined standard that has some form of acronym (the names of which escape me these days) which involve, basically, filling out a form or two attesting (truthfully) to the requirements but that serve only to shield those involved in the process from responsibility beyond whatever the acronym-defining organization thinks to ask. It involved passing a lot of those questions off to the third-party who runs the cloud service, who -- surprise, surprise -- know what boxes to check to receive payment. [0] I love my former employer so I'm leaving the brands off, but at least one product involved was popular enough that my parents received one as a gift for Christmas ... it was fun explaining that some code I had written was running on their phone. [1] The pattern (one that we didn't advocate) went "hire us to build the initial, user-friendly, polished version of the app" then pass it onto said OEM to maintain/update it between hardware versions. To the extent that the first version could be secured, it is (until it's not). They don't trust the OEM to write the initial version, but once it's out there, augmenting it costs 1/10th the price and that's about all their willing to pay after the initial product is created. [2] Someone Else's Problem (Douglas Adams -- Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy).
- Aurornis 3y agoI doubt it's IoT anything. It's more likely that someone left a Bluetooth interface open on the service/control interface. Could be even be something used for normal service operations that wasn't properly secured.