I said to someone in 2013 when the average joe understands the Internet of Things, they will want it outlawed. There is a lot of promise but there is a lot of work that needs to be done on the security side.
There has been a ton of hoopla around the Internet of Things, it has been popular in domain trends, (I actually sold IOT.tv for a decent ROI) and Cisco is betting big on everything in the world being connected. It is not just Cisco there are tech plays all around the world salivating at your refrigerator talking to your toaster.
The hype and investments are great, but how would you like a pedophile viewing a webcam of your baby ?
ArsTechnica wrote a piece on Shodan the search engine launched in 2009 by John Matherly, with the goal of finding vulnerabilities on Internet connected devices. The headline grabber was that people could search for sleeping babies in cribs.
But there are much larger problems and things that need to get fixed before the average joe loses their shit and demands an end to the IOT, because if you think Google retargeting ads is an invasion of your privacy, at least they don’t have the chance to screw with your medical devices.
From the ArsTechnica article:
“The bigger picture here is not just personal privacy, but the security of IoT devices,” security researcher Scott Erven told Ars Technica UK. “As we expand that connectivity, when we get into systems that affect public safety and human life—medical devices, the automotive space, critical infrastructure—the consequences of failure are higher than something as shocking as a Shodan webcam peering into the baby’s crib.”
Admiring the problem is easy. Finding solutions is harder. For his part, Tentler is sceptical that raising consumer awareness will be enough to solve the problem. Despite tons of press harping on about the privacy implications of webcams, it’s pretty clear, according to Tentler, that just telling people to care more about security isn’t going to make a difference.
Next we have things that should never be connected like oh say nuclear plants. The Guardian had this tidbit,
In September 2015, a France-based director at a major international company specialising in cyber security told researchers from Chatham House that they used the site and found “all of the nuclear plants in France that are connected to the internet”.
This will be talk in 2020 – 2024 presidential debates if we get people who actually understand technology.
Joseph Peterson says
You’re right. It’s legitimately scary.
Worst of all, we’ll probably be reliant on companies and governments to assure us that the IOT is secure. And it’s in the interests of those companies and governments to lull us into complacency in order to collect information.
Even Orwell’s nightmares fall short of real technology’s potential intrusiveness.