Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Tattling Kettles Help Researchers Crack WiFi Networks In London (pentestpartners.com)

Posted by timothy on from the hi-fi-jumprope dept.

New submitter campuscodi writes: Security researchers at Pen Test Partners have found a security vulnerability in the iKettle Wi-Fi Electric Kettle that allows attackers to crack the password of the WiFi network to which the kettle is connected. Researchers say that using this simple trick and information about iKettles, they drove around London, cracked home WiFi networks, and created a map of insecure WiFi networks across the city. The same researchers cracked a Samsung smart-fridge this summer to disclose Gmail passwords. If you have 6 minutes, there's a YouTube video you can watch.

3 of 162 comments (clear)

  1. Ok first... by cayenne8 · · Score: 2, Insightful

    ...I gotta go google what the fuck an iKettle is? Is this like a crockpot wired to the internet for some reason?

    --
    Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
    1. Re: Ok first... by TechyImmigrant · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Oddly people in the US don't typically have an electric kettle. Yet once they've spent a week with one, they can't live without it. The bummer is the slow rate they boil relative to UK kettles. UK: 250V*13A = 3250W. US: 115V*15A = 1725W. So it takes roughly twice as long.

      The worst knock-on effect of this is that people seem happy to get tea from restaurants in the form of not-boiling water in a cup, with a tea-bag on a string for the customer to dunk. If you've never tasted tea infused at the proper temperature, you don't know what you're missing.

      I wish for the pre-storage kettle. Put a bunch of low ESR batteries in the base and charge them while not boiling. When someone boils water, combine energy from the mains and the batteries to deliver heat energy to the water.

      --
      I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
    2. Re:Ok first... by vtcodger · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Let me suggest that within three or four years, the Internet Of Things will be redesignated as The Internet Of Horrors due to the lousy security and the lack of real need for remotely controlled toasters, hair driers, toothbrushes and pencil sharpeners. I'm sure that people putting in 80 hour weeks at SV startups with hopes of paying off their student loans and retiring at the age of 27 will be disappointed by that. But I think in the long run, we will all be better off.

      --
      You can't see ANYTHING from a car, You've got to get out of the goddamned contraption and walk...Edward Abbey