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Ubuntu Survey Discovers 'Consumers Are Terrible' About Updating Their IoT Devices (ubuntu.com)
Core evangelist Thibaut Rouffineau writes about the results of Ubuntu's survey of 2000 consumers about their Internet of Things devices:
This survey revealed that, worryingly, only 31% of consumers that own connected devices perform updates as soon as they become available. A further 40% of consumers have never consciously performed updates on their devices... Of those polled, nearly two thirds felt that it was not their responsibility to keep firmware updated. 22% believed it was the job of software developers, while 18% consider it to be the responsibility of device manufacturers.
Canonical has taken the view for some time now that better automatic mechanisms to fix vulnerabilities remotely are needed as an essential step on the way to a secure IoT. We need to remove the burden of performing software updates from the user and we need to actively ban the dreaded 'default password', as Canonical has done with Ubuntu Core 16... It's clear to us that too many of the solutions to IoT security proposed today involve either mitigating security issues after-the-fact, or living in a world where IoT security problems are the accepted norm. This should not and cannot be the case.
They'll be publishing their complete findings in a new paper in January.
Canonical has taken the view for some time now that better automatic mechanisms to fix vulnerabilities remotely are needed as an essential step on the way to a secure IoT. We need to remove the burden of performing software updates from the user and we need to actively ban the dreaded 'default password', as Canonical has done with Ubuntu Core 16... It's clear to us that too many of the solutions to IoT security proposed today involve either mitigating security issues after-the-fact, or living in a world where IoT security problems are the accepted norm. This should not and cannot be the case.
They'll be publishing their complete findings in a new paper in January.
Allright, a device that is like a home appliance will not be treated as something in need of updating, ever. I think those 31% will never re-update the devices after that first time.
Auto updates should be applied by default. Then there should be an option for advanced users to manually keep it up to date.
There are too many people who believe the device will update on its own without involvement.
If these IoT devices are so smart, why can't they update themselves?
I'm not sure about most consumers - even geeky ones - but a normal list of fun-things-to-do-this-weekend doesn't usually include updating the software on my refrigerator and stove.
How many motherboards, routers, webcams, and other devices did I go through that stopped working after applying a firmware update following the instructions given by the manufacturer? I stopped counting. Worse even, once updated all configurations are reset to factory default and I had to either restore the settings if there was a means to back them up or redo everything from scratch. Who the f*ck has time for this? If manufacturers would make updating easy and failsafe the number of folks applying the upgrades would be much higher.
I updated my Blue Ray player yesterday. Now it can't find any wireless networks. Rolling back to an earlier version didn't resolve the issue.
Hooray for updates breaking shit. Anybody got a 100' patch cable I can borrow to run a temporary cable to the router?
LG BD620, fwiw...
... it's all good.
We know from the 2016 election cycle that polls suck tater toes.
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
Future IoT devices (especially consumer devices) should really be self-updating. It's possible with proper encryption to do this safely and securely. Anything that connects to the internet is bound to have exploitable flaws discovered sooner or later, and anything that can't self-patch will never be patched, statistically speaking. I didn't need a study to confirm this (although it's good to have it confirmed). It's blindingly obvious from historical anecdotes and experience. I recall Steve Gibson referring to "The tyranny of the default", meaning that users rarely even change default settings in software, including passwords. Who seriously thinks users would go out of their way to hunt down and apply firmware updates?
I know there's probably resistance to self-updating devices among hard-code* geeks, but I'm talking devices for the masses here. Self-updating and self-patching HAS to become the new norm, like it now is for browsers, another dangerous attack surface. It's herd immunization for the internet.
* I initially mistyped that, but the mistake was funny enough that I left it alone.
Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
And Shouldn't Exist In The First Place.
Seriously, what the fuck!?
Blaming ignorant users for not being technowizards? Yes, *WE* know how to update an embedded linux device, but your average person does not even know it runs embedded linux, let alone how to manage such a device manually.
WHAT THE FUCK. No-- just embed a reasonable package management suite into the firmware that does digitial signature checking, and a chron job to look for updates every week.
This whole problem is a non-problem when handled properly.
The real issue is that some corporate retard wanted to be a miser on the flash chips because he could get teensy weensie ones really cheap, and so essential functionality gets scrapped with a "blame the end user" scapegoat attached.
icebox. constant updating (reloading) by only one vendor with the foreboding obsolescence due to the neighbor's refrigerator.
Main reason number 1 :
"automatic security updates" isn't such an attracting key point to put on a box to get more consumer.
But "this devices has 2x more pixels than the competition and you can control it from a smartphone app" is.
(And a corollary: A gizmo that gets updated regularily will get fixed and new feature for a longer time.
This require work from the company (paying devs)
This means fewer units sold to replace obsolete models)
Main reason number 2 :
Just wait until hackers find way to spoof update source, and use it as a way to install their shit on your IoT gadget
(e.g.: that's a vulnerability that's been found on Philips Smart LED light bulbs).
Making auto-updates work correctly is HARD.
- It require advanced knowledge in cryptography
- You're at risk of TIVO-ising the gizmo if you do it wrong
- This requires that the company that makes the broken gizmo that needs a firmware upgrade be still around tomorrow. That might be the case with Microsoft, but that's hardly the case with countless asian maker of cheap no-name stuff.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
Even with LTS Ubuntu has nightly updates. Great do where si testing and importance, let along at least weekly reboots.
Now the other way, IoT including wirelesss routers have about as many updates as google phone... 0. They you fix issues, just say we push another hardware update for more cash. Look at Linksys WRT1900 and WRT3200AC bad software and still two years later for 1900, still broken by design. IoT is cheap yoss-a-way hardware - so toss it aready.
That's why Microsoft is forcing their updates on everyone, because they know people are idiots and will not update their devices.
An outdated device is just asking to be taken advantage of. I'd rather deal with the very low chance of having an issues that pop up when doing updates than to have some jackass take over my machine because I didn't install that one patch months ago.
My Update Decision is generally driven by:
-What does the changelog say - does it just say "security update" and nothing more?
-What do the other users say? [ generally bad things ]
-Does it remove features I paid for? [ generally yes ]
-Does it introduce new holes? [ of course ]
-Can I downgrade if it doesn't work? [of course not ]
-Can I recover a "bricked" device easily after a bad flash? [not easily ]
-Does it have a failsafe bootloader? [what's that? ]
Generally, the answers to the above questions generally mean I:
-block the device from contacting external update servers
-block the device from communicating to the outside internet
-heavily restrict the device from seeing machines on the LAN
-have a JTAG dongle at the ready - just in case
-backup the firmware any way I can
Hey programmers, how about "you are terrible at writing software"? How about that?
I can't really imagine my house becoming very "smart" with every light bulb doing its own thing. I'd rather pair it with a hub so I could manage all my devices from there. That way the devices themselves would be more shielded and it would be the central point to update everything from. Kinda like active directory/domain administrator but for my IoT network instead of Windows PCs.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
And this is why Microsoft went the route of forced updates. There simple is no other way to get muggles to update their crap unless you force the matter.
"IoT manufacturers are terrible" about building security, usability, and reliability into their products as a fundamental design goal.
But sure, let's blame the customers. Assholes.
slashdot: A failed experiment.
If my consumer product was on a public web site, yes, I can understand this, but it is not.
I have my device behind a firewall and internal to my home network. So the *ONLY* attack will be and can be from within my network. That comes down to: (a) my wife computer, (b) my computer, (c) my desktop and a few other things. (camera and printer are good examples).
Please Mr Hype and Ms Hyperbole - explain it like I am five - what is the quantifiable risk that somebody will bust through my firewall and attack my IOT device that generally does not communicate out side of my network.
This is sort of like telling me the "bathroom door firmware" requires an update and I must vigilantly update the bathroom door lock firmware.
I don't see the risk level you describe.
You'd think that, since it's 2016, we would moved on from manual updates and rebooting post-updates. Why should anyone need a list of which appliances to update and when? We have phones that are unlocked with fingerprints and thermostats that can be adjusted remotely, but we can't automate updates. Come on.
This is because almost no one buys a device BECAUSE it connects to the Internet. The IoT provides little to no value to the consumer, why would they pay attention to when the device needs updating. For that matter, in the normal course of using these devices, how would the end user even know that it needed updating?
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
Fixing defective software is not a "maintenance thing" like changing the oil in your car. It should not be treated as such.
IoT vendors need to take responsibility for the awful code running in their products.
How many of the people that are suggesting that the devices automatically download updates were the ones complaining that Microsoft forced updates to be automatically installed onto their systems?
In my experience, if the manufacturer releases a firmware update that bricks some hardware revisions often they will not warranty repair it. Years ago one of the early Lexmark scanner+laser to make a copier devices shipped with a network stack bug that was a show stopper for us. ($3k+, T63x series printer as a base) Lexmark support wanted me to firmware update before returning it. I read the 'I agree' text with the update, which said bricking the device wasn't covered. I asked support if bricking the device was a risk, and kept a copy of the chat log - which was great because the update bricked the printer. When I called support back, they refused warranty replacement until I showed chat log copies. -sigh-
A friend had a similar experience with an Eyefi (wireless SD card). That's before you get to vendors that do feature or performance takeaway with the update.
The other side of the coin is that I am very dilatory about installing any kind of update to anything because a) experience shows that the chance of an update breaking something in a serious way is something like 10-20%, b) the problem may not be obvious in the first five minutes or the first week of operation.
My wife's PC has now been rendered unbootable TWICE by Microsoft pushing through bad updates. I personally will not install a Mac OS update until I've taken the time to do a local backup to a hard drive, a remote backup to a cloud backup service, and waited two weeks to see if Apple retracts and re-releases the update, and read Macintouch for user reports to see what kinds of problems people are having.
I've already bought a new router once because the manufacturer's firmware update broke it and it was easier to buy another than to troubleshoot it.
I haven't got the time or energy to do that on a dozen household appliances.
The software industry has got to figure out a way to make sure that updates are one or two orders of magnitude safer and more reliable to install than they are today.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
They asked the wrong questions.
What I'd like to know is how many customers updated AFTER BEING NOTIFIED of an available update, and more importantly how many manufacturers even bother notifying customers (if their products don't autoupdate), otherwise this is survey is meaningless.
You cannot put the onus on the customer to keep checking for updates for every damn product out there, especially those that are just seen and treated as appliances thesedays.
The sky is blue.
Grandma loves you.
The internet of things is a terrible idea.
Seriousfreakingly?
People avoid updating their computers, so they're surely going to update their refrigerator or the bottle that tells them when to drink water? "Honey did you remember to update the toilet?" said no one ever.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Someone called the other day advertising their cloud platform. I asked them what do they mean.. Are they hosting virtual machines or .. and their response was it's cloud. So I asked what does cloud mean and they said cloud.. it means cloud. It felt like talking to Miss Swan.
I now find myself having the same question about IoT. What computers connected to the Internet count as IoT and what computers don't? Are SIP ATAs IoT devices? What about PC DVRs? Consumer routers? Are smartphones IoT devices? Are PC's IoT devices?
I'm not even sure I have any IoT devices or maybe every computer I have is an IoT? I'm very sorry for the really stupid pedestrian questions. All I know IoT is going to fundamentally transform the planet.
If it weren't so true. I avoid IoT unless I trully needed. It's not that I don't believe in automation and control. It's just that Internet per se is 't the right choice and I don't want an orchestra of things that anderstand little or nothing of what I want or need.
unfinished: (adj.)
As a 30 year IT veteran, I have never updated a consumer device, by definition. If we are talking about enterprise devices, then we probably have a maintenance contract with a vendor that performs updates for us. But a consumer device? Should just work, and when it gets old, throw it out and get a new one.
The only thing worse than a Democrat is a Republican.
It might be a limited case, but a combined router/modem/switch/fiber NIC/server from one French ISP always checks for updates and installs them. A few major competitors also do I believe.
In US homes, perhaps a similar product of major importance and in the same ideal place to receive continuous updates is the dreaded cable box, afterall the cable provider is the ISP and the cable box is its official sanctioned "modem"? I understand these have a terrible reputation, like the Real Player of home appliances. Well, ideally, this sort of crap should be an example of stuff that gets adequate updates, pushed immediately as available and for many years.
They are time-consuming, failure-prone, complex, and require multiple steps. Once you have 15-20 devices, it could easily take you a month of infuriating weekends doing nothing else, assuming an hour fiddling with each device. What joy!
1. Update processes should be fixed so that they rarely fail and require only triggering, not heavy intervention
2. They should be easy to trigger, and the current update status should be easy to check
Re: #2, there should be a small LED-illuminated button somewhere on each device.
If the button is not illuminated, there are no updates available; device is current.
If the button is glowing green, it indicates that a non-critical update is available.
If the button is glowing yellow, it indicates that a security-critical update is available.
Consumers press the button to run the update.
While updating, the button will flash (either green or yellow) to indicate that an update is in progress and the device is offline.
Once the update is complete, the illumination goes off again.
If the update fails, the button glows red to show failure and that factory service is required.
If someone could walk through their house once a month and glance at each device to see whether an update is available, then press a button to run it, I suspect you'd see a lot more updating going on.
Another path to take is fully automatic updates, but this creates the problem for both consumer and remote support of figuring out whether a device has failed due to manufacturing defect, is offline for other issues, or is offline due to an update failure.
If the consumer is able to time the update for their own convenience, and can observe the result as it occurs and a status after the fact, they can phone in and say that they ran the update and it failed (glowing red) and support can address appropriately. Since consumer was given control over the timing of the update, they can be sure to run it when a failure or offline time won't cause critical problems for them in their living environment.
Of course all of this presumes that updates are available, which has historically not been something that manufacturers care about very much. That can only be fixed through legislation and public spending (i.e. company must provide updates for ten years and is liable for security issues; if company goes out of business, security updates must be funded publicly if total installation size is greater than some number N). This is a much harder problem to solve, as such legislation would be next to impossible to pass.
Of course all of this is a pipe dream, it's much more likely that instead we end up with a world of insecure devices and "hack insurance" that we have to pay for every month for IoT use that addresses homeowner loss and liability issues upon demonstrated security compromise. That's easy to implement and pass and has a ready-made lobby (insurance/financials), and doesn't require social responsibility on the part of companies or the public.
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
I'm shocked. You should be too. Here, hold these wires.
I built and installed a network-based security camera system at my office. Security cameras are one of the IoT devices which frequently seem to be in the news as having security flaws, so I figured I should check for firmware updates. One rolled out and I installed it on one camera.
It reduced the camera's operating resolution from 2048x1536 to 1920x1080. The whole reason I had bought that particular camera was for the 4:3 aspect ratio - that combined with the lens' focal length provided the exact coverage we needed in the area that particular camera was aimed at. I searched for a week for the old firmware, inquired with the U.S. manufacturer (probably a reseller for a Chinese manufacturer) but got no response. I was going to buy new cameras to expand the coverage anyway, so I ended up making sure one of the new cameras was 2048x1536. Then I moved the now-crippled camera to a different location and put the new 2048x1536 camera in its original spot. Fortunately I had been careful to test the new firmware on a single camera before rolling it out to our other cameras (we originally had four 2048x1536 cameras). But the three remaining cameras are still on their older original firmware.
I would love to be able to update devices like this with just security updates. But as long as manufacturers think it's OK to fiddle with functionality in firmware updates, you're forced to choose between risking network security or risking loss of functionality.
How can you ever trust the Corporation to do the right thing with the new updates? They want your stuff to break so you have to buy new. I will never update anything any longer because I dont want my paid for functionality taken away from me.
People are tired of "their" devices changing and needing to relearn how to use them over and over again.
Software needs to be engineered such as the UI experience never changes but you can update the underlying security.
Separate the UI from the underlying tech!
No more new features unless someone wants/needs them.
Stop the marketing eye candy.
Keep it simple stupid.
The S in IoT is for Security.
We don't need no stinkin' security updates. My fridge and toaster have discovered a new purpose in their lives and are now part of something bigger than themselves. I think it's called something like "Mirai." I'm not sure but they're happy with it so why should anyone tear asunder the joy and meaningfulness that they've found?
That is an astonishingly high number in my opinion. Unbelievable I'd even say.
These idiots. They want/expect some kind of future in which I have a hundred individual devices all around my house, all connected to the internet, and they expect me to manually update every one of them? Fuck right off, alright?
While I agree with your overall concept, I've got enough fucking over-bright LED lights around my home already. The whole point of these IoT devices is that you can control them with a phone, Web browser, etc. Put the update notification and button there.
for you unless your going to pay me?
[After 20 minutes on hold and/or waiting on live chat]
Q: Hi support, my device doesn't appear on my phone|won't talk properly on my network because happened suddenly|got new phone|got new router|etc.
A: You need to run the latest update, that should fix the problem.
Q: But I can't without my phone.
A: I'll walk you through it. Step 1 in convoluted process X...
If nothing else, put the notification on the phone, but the button on the actual device. At least that way, if something isn't working, support can say: "Have you pressed the button? Please press the button and wait for 10 minutes, then try again."
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
Updating the fucking lightbulb because the thing Phillips sold you is a piece of shit is not the job of the customer. They bought an appliance that's just supposed to work.
I don't buy any of them because I know Internet of Shit companies have completely blown it there and in every other way and it's going to get a lot worse before it gets better.
Pardon the strong language, not trolling, this is just such an obvious, predictable, very predicted cluster that I have Strong Feelings.
Your PC is an IoT device, yet when Microsoft makes auto-updates mandatory you are all screaming bloody murder. I cathegorically DO NOT WANT manufacturers to be able to see what I'm doing, or change functionality after I bought the device (because I have no guarantees whatsoever they will not remove half of the features I wanted and needed, as Sony did with the PS3 'other OS' option), or even outright disable the device (like what happened with that Samsung phone).
I can only hope that devices that are not, in fact, connected to the internet will remain available for sale. "Your fridge was unable to download security updates and has therefore been disabled" is not a message I _ever_ want to see in my life.
Stop thinking like a Geek. Your LED scheme is only useful to someone who would update his devices in the first place.
You need to think like a grandmother in rural BumFuck with a 6th grade education.
Light is on, any color: Something is wrong. Push button. Go back to Soap Opera.
Light is off. Nothing is wrong. Go back to Soap Opera.
Lack of compartmentability, lack of modularity, far too tight integration inbetween software components of the embedded device's rom. So have to replace whole thing, and not the faulty part. What does that remind me of, eheheh? Oh yeah, every consumer product ever.
In perfect world, the features of OS it runs would be like linux's packages... like opwnwrt had it implemented? You don't like this particular HTTP interface? uninstall it and put another one in (afaik there's only two for openwrt, but still).
As for updates, have a cron job check for updates, then bug the luser to press a big red button on the device by injecting big red rectangles with text into his http sessions?
Ofc, everything above is completely irrelevant, when the lusers don't configure their devices and just plug it in...
Consumer are not system administrator. Consumer expect some device categories to work out of the box, without having to update them, and most IOT devices belong to those categories. Why should a consumer "update" his fridge ? Such device , if on internet, should do it itself automatically , and fail gracefully if the update fail (go back to previous version). It will take about 20 to 40 years for the perceptions to changes, as the older generations dies out, and the younger is used to update everything. Me ? I just by "dumb" stuff , so far I have not seen anything IoT device do which interest me.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
Have the OS of the fridge/TV/whatever baked into the chip somehow (physically baked, or write-once EPROM or whatever).
Just as a side-note, for information:
EPROM : erase-able programmable read-only memory. (and EEPROM are electrically-erasable - as opposed to other methods like UV light).
(so you would need to drop the first E).
I'm probably missing something here, though.
There are 2 different problem:
TL;DR: exploitable bugs permanently burning into ROM ; lower cost of production allowing last-minute firmware changes.
I.
- yes, if the firmware is in a non-re-programmable ROM, an attacker could not permanently install a backdoor on your smart-LED-lightbulb.
- but if the smart-LED-lightbulb's firmware has a known vulnerability, an attacker could use it to take over the currently running linux server in RAM. The attacks won't survive a reboot (un-screwing the ligh-bulb ?) but as long as the bulb is powered and its server is running, maliciously injected code could be running.
- so you would need a way to upgrade the firmware to something more secure. On a bigger gizmo such thing could be possible by swapping socketed ROM chips (that's how I received an upgrade to my eMagine 3D Visor Z800 HMD - they shipped me a small ROM chip and pincer to help swapping them).
But given the tendencies of modern ultra-tiny-sized gizmos that is going to be hard
(common: light bulbs. Modern LED bulbs hide nearly all their electronics inside the screw. A socketed field-replaceable ROM chip is nearly as big as all these electronics)
(and that's not considering things like SD cards which contain a wireless linux file server - like PQI, Toshiba, etc. the whole gizmo is *smaller* than most socketable ROM chips).
II.
- nowadays the total cost of production of a gizmo using some EEPROM or eMMC is much lower.
Yup the hardware itself is probably slightly more expensive than ROM.
BUT having something that is easy field upgradeable means that the firmware can be hastily written in parallel at the same time as the hardware is produced, can be fixed in last minute until it's more or less functional and then flash it on the production hardware as it leaves assembly, just before packing into its box. This makes much lower production costs.
(Due to the easier dev cycles)
As opposed of needing a fully ready ROM with the firmware permanently burned into it as you start producing the hardware. (Needs to be already ready and debugged at the moment you start ramping up production. Meaning that you need several cycles of prototypes before to develop the ROM).
Or trying to make a gadget that can accept both EEPROM (in the dev prototype) and can be swapped with a ROM without much further hardware re-design in the final production device.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
How many times have we performed an update to only lose functionality? How many times did something that just worked before stop working after an update?
How many times did we wish we could roll-back an update, only to find that there was no reliable and easy way to do so?
Developers need to address these concerns, and a few others, in order to get the kind of consumer confidence that would result in people allowing auto-updates or performing manual updates regularly.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
I also know that you are out of milk.
Yup. It's a simple 3 point plan.
You just have no idea how many things could go wrong in a such seemingly simple plan.
If even Microsoft and Sony can't manage to get crypto right to protect their game consoles,
you can bet that small noname fly-by-night chinese constructors are going to completely b0rk their work.
Just of the top of my head :
- fixed IP and/or address : can be spoofed, or control of the domain name could be lost.
- "if a new is found download it" : nearly every single word of this sentence has a couple of embarrassingly stupid bug opportunities like buffer overflows, of by 1, etc.
From the purely security point of view: a rookie garanteed to forget to check if the payload downloaded can fit into the download area (remember : at this step we haven't checked yet the legitimacy of the payload).
- signature check : I won't even go in the territory of stolen private master key (hello blueray consortium !) You have realworld hardware that does asinine stuff like checking only the signature of thea update's header (free to put whatever payload you want). Or check a non cryptographic checksum.
And now for the "you definitely need a crypto guy": you need to make sure all of the above isn't leaking critical data. (the Smart LED bulb embed is likely to pull it's power from the same circuitry as the light source. If CPU activity is leaked in humanly-imperceptible blinking, that means that an attacker could steal some access token simply by watching the shimmering of light through the window from the outside using a high-speed camera. No even need for direct physical access)
And that's without taking into account even more stupiderer shit. Like the code-path ending up executing the upgrade anyway, no matter is some test failed. Because in their rush to produce the cheapest shit as fast as possible in order to hit the shelf before christmas, they didn't even properly test their codepaths.
Yup, probably you could more or less design a not to bad upgrade scheme. But you're a /.er, with probably long experience and proper education.
That's not the case of the countless over-worked, over-stressed, under-qualified slav... huh "employees" in some asian sweat-shop that must clob it together on a shoe string budget and completely unrealistic time constrains. And got pulled into that position on the ground that on last month's gizmo project at the same workshop he wrote some script (used in the driver installer), making the employee instant "computer stuff guru".
And if even a big name brand like Philips can't properly secure their Smart LED bulbs, you can only begin to imagine the Coding-Horror/Daily WTF level of atrocities which go in the small noname chinese shops where most of the cheapest shit is going to get outsourced.
So no.
Making a simple auto-upgrade isn't easy without pulling people whose experties is in security/crypto.
You need to have a competent guy in the security/crypto just to check and oversee that the rest of the software team didn't botch the firmware.
And that's for every single internet-connect shit in the house. Including the damn stupid "Smart LED bulb" or "Internet connected fridge", because all of these are very likely to be on the same WiFi network as the Synology "all in one, ready to use" file server which contains all the juicy bits (important documents over CIFS/SMB) and which could be hacked (much more potential for a zombie demon running on the file server, that on the light-bulb).
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
I'm not updating my fridge. I'm not updating my router. I'm not updating my toothbrush. I'm not updating my toilet. Aside from real security items -- and by that I mean the security of my blood coarsing through my arteries (and some specific veins) I'm not creating more work for myself. It's that simple.
My car gets semi-annual maintenance service because it can kill me in a heartbeat if it breaks. Elevators, furnaces, hot-water tanks, swimming pools, attics; these are the kinds of things that can cause death or major illness if not maintained.
Beyond that, nobody cares if my phone slows down, and while I don't want anyone listening to my calls, I ain't a'gonna spend every waking moment fighting back.
It's that simple.
Once again, I sleep in my house, protected by a dead-bolt lock, on a metal front door, right next to a glass window. The back door is all-glass. Absolutely nothing stops anyone from killing me in my sleep.
My Panasonic Viera smart TV has not had a single firmware update since I brought it home from the store. Three years, not a single update of any kind. I've prompted it, I've checked the version number -- no updates.
It's almost like once they have your money, they don't care.
This is exactly why, in the earlier days of routers, I would only buy Apple routers. On those the computer not the router took care of letting you kow there was an update and then taking care of the install. THe idea of doing that with varying brands of netgears and such was way to intimidating to keep track of on your own.
This is what needs to happen with IoT and this is why things like NEST or other management systems are going to prevail. Maybe even apple will do something in this space.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
...water is wet! Film at 11
I don't have half an hour to install the latest firmware on each of the windows in my house. Either have it connect to a gateway that is responsible for enforcing security. Or make updates truly automatic and unnoticeable. Like hot swap of OS kernel and transparent restart of processes using comprehensive saved UI state.
If my physical windows start behaving like Windows 10, I am going on a serious case of gadget rage and publishing it on Youtube!
We cant really trust auto-update either, just look at Microsoft Win 7 what they do when they have full control over updates..They abuse the update system to insert non security items under the Security update auto-update system. No trust is my reasons for shutting of auto-updates
Jack of all trades,master of none
This feels like one of those lets just make sure this assumption isn't wrong type studies. Who in there right mind would expect someone to run a software update on there internet connected light bulb.
I have a bunch of new cameras. These aren't cheapo ones, they're 1080p and light up the night like a football field. The crappy software required IE. Upgrade to Windows 10? Tough, you can't even communicate with it anymore. I had to dig up a vista machine to even set the time. Then trying to update it bricked the first one. They're supposed to be sending me a new one while they figure out how to use something other than IE and how to get it to update.
Maybe I should have bought a cheapo camera. Maybe they sell so many of them they have to keep them so they'll update.
The only think I could think to do is put them on their own switch, on their own network that is firewalled by a Linux box with two nics. Of course I realize someone could hook up to that network on the outside. No dhcp, no other services other than the other cameras and if you're running windows 10 - nothing you can do either.
I mean, I'm mildly gratified to see that the Ubuntu survey confirmed this but... to my mind this was obvious. Blazingly, blindingly, mind-bogglingly obvious!
These IoT devices are sold as plug-and-play devices. "Just plug them in and go!" says all the ad copy. All the marketing is about exciting, quick-reward, cutting-edge, mobile accessible, blah blah blah. They never market security, performance, maintenance and support. It's all buzzwords and hype, geared for the quick buying decision, quick reward for the consumer.
Most likely though, Canonical was looking for some moral support and quantitative justification for their position on updates.
"Canonical has taken the view for some time now that better automatic mechanisms to fix vulnerabilities remotely are needed as an essential step on the way to a secure IoT."
Therefore yes, I whole-heartedly agree with this statement.
So, let's see, we are pissed off that Microsoft is forcing updates on us and that any particular update can be forced onto our Weendoze 10 box by the NSA or any other TLA, but, wait, let's do this for our IoT devices! It'll be great!