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The Internet of Things Is a Surveillance Nightmare (dailydot.com)
An anonymous reader writes from a DailyDot's Kernel Mag article: Welcome to the Internet of Things, what Schneier calls "the World Size Web," already growing around you as we speak, which creates such a complete picture of our lives that Dr. Richard Tynan of Privacy International calls them "doppelgangers" -- mirror images of ourselves built on constantly updated data. These doppelgangers live in the cloud, where they can easily be interrogated by intelligence agencies. Nicholas Weaver, a security researcher at University of California, Berkeley, points out that "Under the FISA Amendments Act 702 (aka PRISM), the NSA can directly ask Google for any data collected on a valid foreign intelligence target through Google's Nest service, including a Nest Cam." And that's just one, legal way of questioning your digital doppelgangers; we've all heard enough stories about hacked cloud storage to be wary of trusting our entire lives to it. [...] But with the IoT, the potential goes beyond simple espionage, into outright sabotage. Imagine an enemy that can remotely disable the brakes in your car, or (even more subtly) give you food poisoning by hacking your fridge. That's a new kind of power. "The surveillance, the interference, the manipulation the full life cycle is the ultimate nightmare," says Tynan. [...] That makes the IoT vulnerable -- our society vulnerable -- to any criminal with a weekend to spend learning how to hack. "When we talk about vulnerabilities in computers... people are using a lot of rhetoric in the abstract," says Privacy International's Tynan. "What we really mean is, vulnerable to somebody. That somebody you're vulnerable to is the real question." The state of security around IoT, the chip or sensor-equipped devices connected to each other over the Internet, is deeply concerning. Just in the past few months, we have seen several instances of these devices getting hacked. We have also seen things such as Shodan, a search engine for the Internet of Things that can allow someone to browse vulnerable webcams. Many people continue to overlook the significance and potential consequences of their "smart" devices getting compromised. Someone recently asked, "So what if my coffee maker gets hacked? What are criminals going to do? Burn my coffee?" They can do a lot more than burn your coffee. You see these devices are connected to your Wi-Fi network, which gives them the ability to interact with other gadgets connected to the same network. When attackers manage to access one of these devices, it's only a matter of time before they own your entire network.
Except the THERAC problem was almost the opposite of unregulated quality control. Because getting new software tested and certified was so very expensive, they decided to reuse their existing certified software in a new model of machine, thus avoiding the cost of the review process. The new device was slightly different, though, and more susceptible to the latent bug that caused the fatally high doses of radiation. (As I recall, it was an error handler in the patient name field that caused it to misinterpret the dose the technician selected.)
The regulatory process was partially at fault for making regulations so burdensome the company would rather play a game to get around them. I'm not saying we shouldn't have rigorous testing for safety critical applications, but that certification testing needs to incorporate the whole application plus its intended environment, not just testing the different bits from the last time it was certified.
John
The real problem with the IoT is that everyone and their brother is trying to be the One True Provider of All Home Automation, and they want to do it in the cloud so they can charge you for integrating with everyone else's clouds. Nest has the whole Nest-Certified thing, running in the cloud. Samsung has the Samsung Smart Home, running your washers, dryers, and air conditioners in their cloud. AssureLink will happily run your garage door openers in their cloud. Honeywell has their thermostat system, in their cloud. Rheem has their EcoNet for running hot water heaters, in their cloud. LG has a cloud service for their TVs. Schlage has a cloud for running door locks. D-Link has a cloud for viewing their security cameras. Fitbit cloud-enables your health data. Philips' cloud runs your Hue lights. And so on.
Cloud solves some thorny problems. It enables easier configuration of the home user's environment by removing most of the barriers, which is critical to commercial success. Ordinary people don't know they need to poke a hole in their firewalls, and they also know they don't want to know all those technical details. But they still want to remotely access their IoThings from their iPhones. Having the IoThings phone home to the cloud means there's a central point to discover and communicate with them, making the consumer's installation woes less painful - ease of use is critical to driving sales. And the cloud can back up those configurations, allowing you to replace your old device 1.0 with new device 2.0, all without pain.
Clouds can also improve end user security - from a certain kind of threat. If your home device is connecting to the cloud and never listening for input on its own, its attack surface is much smaller than if it has opened a port on your firewall. And when your home device needs a security patch, the cloud can push it. Obviously, that means your home devices place their trust in the cloud to be secure, which is the point of TFA.
But the main problem cloud solves is that clouds provide an ongoing "service" for which the device provider can charge $9.99/month. And it's all about the continual extraction of money from the consumers. Why sell an overpriced sprinkler system only once when you can have that wealthy sprinkler system owner send your cloud service a check every single month? That's really why everyone wants to be the company that sells you the One True System, so they are the ones you're willing to pay on a monthly basis.
What I want (and have) is a server in my house that handles the home automation communications and executes rules without requiring a cloud. Unfortunately, most of the commercial hubs come needlessly saddled with clouds. There is no technical reason for an Iris hub or a Wink hub to connect to a cloud, yet they do. Amazon Echo runs everything to the cloud, including your voice. Better systems make the cloud optional.
There are also better choices on the horizon. OpenHAB is making great progress on providing an open source Java package that can handle a wide variety of home automation devices; GUI control is getting there, but setup and configuration is still a complex problem that's out of reach of the average homeowner.
John