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Russia: Hidden chips 'launch spam attacks from irons'
- elwell 13y agoSee what happens when you take down the iron curtain???
- onion2k 13y agoI've been ironing my tinfoil hat and all along I was just perpetuating the problem. Doh!
- makerops 13y agoI am sorry, but this is just cool (if in fact, the reporting is accurate).
- AUmrysh 13y agoThis is why using Chinese chips in American military equipment is a bad idea, aside from the fact that ghost runs of popular chips can result in fake, non-working chips.
- Axsuul 13y agoScary foresight of things to come with the internet of things.
- vezzy-fnord 13y agoI'm more afraid of computerized toilets, to be honest.
- EA 13y agoScary to think that my coffee pot is connected to your coffee pot by a piece of metal.
- noonespecial 13y agoScarier still, they might not need the metal. It might just go invisibly through the air.
- balabaster 13y agoI wonder if they spend their time exchanging pictures of cats too?
- JVIDEL 13y agoNope, toaster pictures
- balabaster 13y agoThat's like porn to irons? :D
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- bhousel 13y agoExcept that it isn't.
- lvs 13y agoYes, there will be a transformer on a pole (or in a box) outside your house somewhere, which means your coffee put is only inductively coupled to my coffee pot, unless you happen to be my neighbor.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- rexreed 13y agoSounds interesting - it must be very cost effective to do this, so I'm wondering what chipsets are used in these products? Would this make for a very low cost Internet of Things? I've always wanted to have a mini-router embedded in a light bulb. It wouldn't need power and should have decent range.
- nwh 13y agoYou can use one of the WiFi SD cards for something like this. They're completely hackable, and run busybox linux. This is an early article, an other people have gone so far as to add displays and other devices to them. http://haxit.blogspot.com.au/2013/08/hacking-transcend-wifi-sd-cards.html http://haxit.blogspot.com.au/2013/08/hacking-transcend-wifi-...
- scotty79 13y agoThank you for amazing me.
- toomuchtodo 13y agoDo you have one in mind? An Eye-Fi perhaps?
- nwh 13y agoThey all seem to be built on the same foundations, though the Transcend ones look to be the most popular. I've one sitting around but I haven't had a chance to do much with it except for confirming that the vulnerabilities exist.
- conductor 13y agoWhy did they choose the irons? Usually irons are not plugged-in more than couple of hours in a week.
- Sanddancer 13y agoFirst thing that comes to mind is that no one would suspect an iron. People are gonna beat their heads over these intermittent spam issues for quite a while before any correlation pops up. Second, if you add a battery to the chipset, then you can charge while the person's ironing and out spam throughout the week. Irons are pretty high power devices, so no one's really going to notice an extra watt or so.
- discreditable 13y agoWouldn't an SOC + battery in an iron be fairly prone to overheating issues?
- pyre 13y agoIt could just charge while the iron is on, and do everything else while the iron is off. As to being affected by heat, there are parts of the iron that can't be hot (i.e. the handle), so you can move the install away from the hot parts.
- dhughes 13y ago> First thing that comes to mind is that no one would suspect an iron. ... That's very Monty Python.
- Cyranix 13y agoThat may be part of the reason. Common household item with somewhat unpredictable usage sounds like a good way to mask the activity.
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- venomsnake 13y agoMy new company will provide Faraday caging of homes and residential buildings... Seems like with the new Intel chips with built in wifi that were rumored it will become popular service
- rexreed 13y agoWould it help in this case? Sure, you'd prevent signals from leaving the house, but the signals in this case are all internal to the house, so the wifi would still work internally. All you'd prevent are outside services from pinging in and vice-versa, not much help for internal devices connected through broadband internet wired or fiber.
- venomsnake 13y agoThere won't be much unsecured stuff to connect to on the inside.
- newsmaster 13y ago"by connecting to any computer within a 200m (656ft) radius which were using unprotected Wi-Fi networks." wow it's better than any wifi router I've ever owned! Time to buy an iron.
- im3w1l 13y agoI wonder if finding this is the result of post-NSA paranoia.
- wil421 13y agoIn other news the NSA has possible backdoors in real computer devices.
- bio4m 13y agoAre SoC's getting so cheap that this kind of scatter shot approach is cost effective ? In all honesty I believe this is a fabricated story. Mainly 1) its not cheap 2) Irons are hot and can have water in them for steam. Not ideal for electronics 3) Irons aren't in use all day. Hardly a great attack vector, a mobile phone charger would be much better
- anigbrowl 13y agoYeah, I'm not really buying this either, Russian state media isn't exactly the high-water mark of journalism. The idea is entertaining though.
- bio4m 13y agoThere is a possibility that this is an attempt to build up a media cover and public support for rolling out some sort of state sponsored "security" system for Russian citizens akin to the Great Firewall of China.
- slezyr 13y agoAnd it's need a power convector. Yes, it's fake. Russia trying to find a reason to block goods from China.
- mrb 13y agoAbout #2: Irons already have electronics in them, typically a microcontroller + sensor + LED(s) + input buttons + of course the heating element.
- bio4m 13y agoNow I feel old; last time i looked inside an iron all I found was a thermocouple, a cheap bulb and the heating element;)
- tokenadult 13y agoThere are lots of attempts at humor in the comments. So far, the BBC reporting just says, "State-owned channel Rossiya 24" reported something, without any BBC reporter claiming to have independently verified the reports from Russia. Maybe this isn't a true fact about the world. It might be Russian official media paranoia, or some kind of hoax, or some kind of misunderstanding of a legitimate product feature. Until this story is better verified, I will go right on ironing my clothes. Are there specific brand names or lot numbers of the products available to reporters in other places who could verify (or disconfirm) this story?
- mikecane 13y agoThe original Russian report is typically fractured by Google Translate: http://translate.google.com/translate?sl=ru&tl=en&js=n&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.rosbalt.ru%2Fpiter%2F2013%2F10%2F22%2F1190990.html http://translate.google.com/translate?sl=ru&tl=en&js=n&prev=... I think this is something where shipments specifically headed to Russia were targeted. But that's not to say it can't pop up elsewhere. [typo edit]
- pavel_lishin 13y agoI'm having a hard time believing that they detected some of the microchips by comparing the listed shipment weights with the actual shipment weights.
- TrainedMonkey 13y agoLet us imagine a hypothetical scenario. Two identical shipments are weighted at the same scale during customs. One of them is consistently 0.05% heavier than expected. Then you notice same pattern with a few more shipments. An inquiring mind might wanna open a few boxes and see what is up. *Typoed
- mikecane 13y agoWeight is likely taken very seriously by any Customs department due to drug smuggling. And these days, much more malevolent items.
- IvyMike 13y agoDuring my short time in Russia, the "unprotected wifi network" did not appear to exist. Wherever I went, they seemed pretty paranoid (probably justifiably) about keeping wifi locked down. Hotels went so far as to give you a custom per-device one-day-only password.
- mgkimsal 13y agogorky park was one of the few 'open wifi' hotspot I found this year (April). I'm sure there are others, and I didn't venture outside of downtown moscow, but I didn't notice open wifi (found a couple, really poor speed). I had a mifi hotspot with me which kept me connected around town.
- pampa 13y agoStarbucks and mcdonalds has open wifi, Aa lot of cafes and food courts in malls. Private access points are usually WPA/WPA2
- mgkimsal 13y agonoticed in mcd, but only went in twice. My wifi thing popped up asking if I wanted to join (IIRC), and did in gorky park, but rarely ever did anywhere else - travelled a lot of small backroads and streets in moscow, so maybe I didn't hit too many freebies.
- qwerta 13y ago> a custom per-device one-day-only password Pretty common in Europe.
- sehugg 13y agoThey do this in parts of Europe, but I think this is more due to laws that make the hotspot operator liable for user conduct.
- drzaiusapelord 13y agoThere are European (EU?) laws that do this too, and I'm assuming Russia ones. Essentially, they want the identity of every user on wifi. Sucks for the casual traveler.
- MayRose 13y agoGOSPEL ARTIST POSES NUDE! Evon Latrail is the author of a children's book "When Mommy Went to Heaven". She wrote/recorded a few songs; "Lord Bless My Enemies. And, even has a song entitled, "Can't You See (Abortion Is Murder). She went Pro-life after having a abortion! Really???? Now here is a photo of her posing in chocolate as a "Swamp Girl". The word Hypocrite is floating around somewhere. This story has made front page news in the local paper. Go to Google or YouTube and search, Evon Latrail.
- not_rhodey 13y agoThere is no way that this attack method is profitable if the attacker is fronting the cost of manufacturing. This leads me to believe that this article is incorrect or fabricated, or that this is a seriously interesting attack on a iron manufacturer.
- ChuckMcM 13y agoThis is pretty funny. I doubt its authenticity but confess that when I worked at Intel (a looooooooooong time ago) and Andy Grove suggested there would be an 8086 in every Toaster I thought he was nuts, because the minimum system was about 4 sq inches (I had one as a demo board Intel sold) and who would want a CPU in a toaster anyway? A timer and a heating element, how hard is that? Flash forward to today when playing with an Electric Imp[1] and noting that you don't need 4 sq inches, you don't even need 1 sq inch and you can network the damn thing. So it certainly becomes feasible to do this sort of thing but I'm unable to construct a non-targeted reason why it would be worthwhile to do it. Now if you said, "A shipment of toasters headed for the US Embassy" or something where there was some actionable intelligence to be gained by snooping the network, perhaps. but randomly? Not so much. [1] http://electricimp.com http://electricimp.com
- drzaiusapelord 13y agoI know the net enabled toaster is a running joke, but I would kill for one. Typically toasters are cheaply made and give varying results. I'd love to see a Nest-like toaster. I'd buy it in a second. Not sure if it needs net access, but it can certainly use intelligence. Might be nice for it to email me when its crumb tray gets full or download updates (toasting times for new items like gluten free bagels, etc).
- adriand 13y agoDear god no. I have a Nest thermostat and it drives me nuts with its inappropriate learning behaviour. I can just imagine the toaster learning, incorrectly, to what degree I wish my bread to be toasted and thus giving me levels of crispiness that I did not expect or want. I really think there's a problem with over-engineered products these days. Not every appliance needs a motor or batteries, let alone a computer. I'm still very happy with my manual can-opener (the most reliable ones are the most basic, in my experience, like this one: http://meridianvale.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/can_opener.jpg http://meridianvale.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/can_opener.j...) and my analog meat thermometer.
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- gcb0 13y agohacking at its best. and a whole new meaning to internet of things.
- slig 13y agoAre botnets getting expensive or do they suck to send spam nowadays?
- drzaiusapelord 13y agoThe source for this is Russia state owned media. I imagine this is a Ukrainian chocolate situation. When Russia gets pissed at someone they attack a trade relationship that hurts that country. Suddenly, Ukrainian chocolate is unsafe. Suddenly, American adoptive parents are unsafe and morally dubious for Russia adoptions. I wonder who makes these irons and if this is the beginning of a larger smear operation.
- smcl 13y agoI've not heard about the Ukrainian chocolate war before (have now googled and read about it, oddly enough in Russia Today), but I've read about and seen the Georgian and Moldovan wine ban in action. Pretty brutal for such small countries to be honest. Luckily the best Georgian + Moldovan wine will get exported to the EU anyway, but for your average winery times must get tough.
- guard-of-terra 13y agoI'm not so sure EU wants to import wine anyway. They have their own of the best quality in any quantities
- vidarh 13y agoThe EU imports massive amounts of wine from all over, so yes, Russia might just turn out to hurt their own interests with that ban, as it's quite possible Georgia and Moldova will simply find other markets and get less dependent on Russian trade.
- berntb 13y agoThe horrifying part of this behaviour of using conspiracy theories and blaming external enemies, is that it is so like the world's worst dicatorships, in e.g. the Middle East. Where will this end? :-(
- hedgie13 13y agoGranted, the source is not known for reliability, but than everyone laughed their asses of when discussing fake stone used by British in Moscow spy scandal. Until British admitted something like 5 years later ( http://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/jan/19/fake-rock-spy-russia-britain http://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/jan/19/fake-rock-spy-r... ). So I'll file it under "curious, possible, but so far dubious".
- huhtenberg 13y agoIf you read the original, there are several strong bullshit indicators. The 200 meter range is one. Second, they quote some guy who's a director of a consumer electronics importer. He says that the reason they found these "spy chips" is because the shipment of consumer electronics was over declared customs weight. So they started looking and found chips, meaning that the keyword you are looking here for is "customs", not "Chinese spam chips" :) [0] http://www.rosbalt.ru/piter/2013/10/22/1190990.html http://www.rosbalt.ru/piter/2013/10/22/1190990.html
- trycatch 13y agoThe story was discussed on Russian forums and people found even more blatant BS there -- "wi-fi module" was in fact just a speaker used to indicate horizontal position of the iron, spying module in the demonstrated Chinese phone were just capacitors.
- csandreasen 13y agoTrue or not, it's an interesting attack vector. Makes me wonder (again, assuming this is real) if it was designed that way or perhaps the manufacturer was compromised/firmware modified (although why would an iron need firmware?). I imagine we'll probably see more attacks using unconventional attack vectors in the future; the Chinese hackers using a thermostat to maintain persistence in the US Chamber of Commerce springs to mind [1]. Something that you bring in and connect willingly to your network would be devastating. Can you imagine buying a new TV, toy for your kids or some other high-tech wifi-enabled device and later discovering that it would periodically arp-poison your laptop? [1] (see section titled "Lying in wait", about halfway down the article) http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/31/technology/chinese-hackers-infiltrate-new-york-times-computers.html?smid=tw-share&pagewanted=all&_r=0 http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/31/technology/chinese-hackers...
- pantalaimon 13y agoFinally, the Internet of Things is becoming a reality
- snorkel 13y agoMakes sense. People who use irons are the real global power brokers in every modern society. The laundry room is the ultimate prize. Even though it may cost $50 to manufacture an iron that has 200M WiFi range and sophisticated viral payloads, and sure irons are unplugged most of the time, and OK, you'd have to sell the irons at a steep loss, but still you will have amassed a network of thousands of irons spanning the globe, listening, waiting, and ironing.
- selimthegrim 13y ago"This is a Seldon crisis we're facing, Sutt, and Seldon crises are not solved by individuals but by historic forces. Hari Seldon, when he planned our course of future history, did not count on brilliant heroics but on the broad sweeps of economics and sociology. So the solutions to the various crises must be achieved by the forces that become available to us at the time. "In this case, -trade!" Sutt raised his eyebrows skeptically and took advantage of the pause, "I hope I am not of subnormal intelligence, but the fact is that your vague lecture isn't very illuminating." "It will become so," said Mallow. "Consider that until now the power of trade has been underestimated. It has been thought that it took a priesthood under our control to make it a powerful weapon. That is not so, and this is my contribution to the Galactic situation. Trade without priests! Trade alone! It is strong enough. Let us become very simple and specific. Korell is now at war with us. Consequently our trade with her has stopped. But, -notice that I am making this as simple as a problem in addition, -in the past three years she has based her economy more and more upon the nuclear techniques which we have introduced and which only we can continue to supply. Now what do you suppose will happen once the tiny nuclear generators begin failing, and one gadget after another goes out of commission? "The small household appliances go first. After a half a year of this stalemate that you abhor, a woman's nuclear knife won't work any more. Her stove begins failing. Her washer doesn't do a good job. The temperature-humidity control in her house dies on a hot summer day. What happens?" He paused for an answer, and Sutt said calmly, "Nothing. People endure a good deal in war." "Very true. They do. They'll send their sons out in unlimited numbers to die horribly on broken spaceships. They'll bear up under enemy bombardment, if it means they have to live on stale bread and foul water in caves half a mile deep. But it's very hard to bear up under little things when the patriotic uplift of imminent danger is not present. It's going to, be a stalemate. There will be no casualties, no bombardments, no battles. "There will just be a knife that won't cut, and a stove that won't cook, and a house that freezes in the winter. It will be annoying, and people will grumble." Sutt said slowly, wonderingly, "Is that what you're setting your hopes on, man? What do you expect? A housewives' rebellion? A Jacquerie? A sudden uprising of butchers and grocers with their cleavers and bread-knives shouting 'Give us back our Automatic Super-Kleeno Nuclear Washing Machines.'"
- marshray 13y agoWithout more evidence, I'm pretty skeptical of this particular claim. Nevertheless, thousands of heating elements under your control in enemy territory would make a pretty evil cyberweapon.
- mdisraeli 13y agoTOR EXIT NODES. In a single swoop, the internet just got a whole lot messier to police ;) I've been thinking about ideas like this for years, but it never occurred to me that you could just hit the supply chain at the source, rather than covertly fit the devices once kit had been installed.
- keithboor 13y agoThis makes me miss Burn Notice. Thats the kind of stuff Michael Westen would be doing in pretty much every episode.
- cdi 13y agoDon't trust anything Russian state-owned media says. It went completely crazy in last 2 years. I recently watched a "Documentary" on this main "news" channel Rossiya 24, which speculated that the outbreak of Swine influenza in Asia was an ethnicity-targeted bio-weapon attack, carried out by the US. And other similarly insane things like "Bill Gates tries to make everybody infertile in Africa, with his anti-malaria vaccine." Overall mood that this 'program' tried to convey is "be afraid, be very afraid of foreigners and foreign states. They are out to get you."
- annnnd 13y agoSounds like pretty much any media in any state, USA included... Replace the names of the countries and you will get your regular CNN.
- dschiptsov 13y ago"И — боже вас сохрани — не читайте до обеда советских газет..."
- skyfantom 13y agoGive us time, and we'll make bears with WiFi bots!
- fit2rule 13y agoThere's really no way for us to know that CPU manufacturers haven't embedded a backdoor that transmits - on some unknown frequency, or maybe technology - the contents of CPU registers and cache lines directly to some NSA satellite somewhere. We just don't have the ability to audit the powers that create these machines; and this sort of highlights a massive disparity between classes - the technocratic class, and the consumer class.