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

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.

Comments

This case...

[Anonymous Coward]

This is a case of the pot calling the kettle hacked.

[Puts on sunglasses] Yeah!

Re: Ok first...

[TechyImmigrant]

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.