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LG Threatens To Put Wi-Fi in Every Appliance it Introduces in 2017 (arstechnica.com)
An anonymous reader shares a report: During the company's CES press conference today, LG marketing VP David VanderWaal says that "starting this year" all of LG's home appliances will feature "advanced Wi-Fi connectivity." One of the flagship appliances that will make good on this promise is the Smart Instaview Refrigerator, a webOS-powered Internet-connected fridge that among other things supports integration with Amazon's Alexa service.
For making my shopping easier. With all the choices out there, I can just cross LG off the list of anything I'd own.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
I'm not surprised LG is doing this. Whether it's for raw competitive reasons ("Look Phil! This one has the Wi-Fi and a touchscreen!") or less-than-desirable reasons (acquiring information regarding the use of the product / making it less serviceable by techs without specialized equipment), the fact is that this sort of thing was basically inevitable.
Whether it's worth caring about depends on whether the devices will perform their intended function without internet access. Sure, some people will find it nifty to have an app notify them when preheating is done or to be able to check that they turned the stove off as they drive away (and turn it off if they didn't), but the real question is whether I'll be required to sign up for an LG account in order to set it to 375 to bake cookies.
Internet connectivity as a bonus, I'm fine with. Internet connectivity to do the functions that have been served for the last hundred years with a knob...not so much.
The "threat" comes when somebody with an exploit kit and a laptop drives by and turns your fridge into a ransomeware tool that spoils your food and posts naked photos of you getting up for a midnight snack on reddit.
Yes, it is a threat - if a device can be connected to, it's exposed to compromise.
I want my fridge to keep my milk, meet and liquor cold. I do not want it to tell me anything, ever. I do not want it to engage with me, to use my bandwidth, to report back to LG on my shopping habits, to fill out a grocery list, or do ANYTHING except serve as a platform to chill the things I desire chilled.
Bad enough that pacemakers are getting hacked and hospital networks are getting shut down - I have zero interest in furthering this stupid fucking push to make everything available for someone else to exploit.
...threatens to put a Lithium-Ion battery in every appliance!
I'm already tech support for my entire family. Now I get to be tech support for their appliances. Every Thanksgiving is going to be "oh, since you're here, can you fix the wifi on the fridge?"
We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
LG. You whole home can be a botnet now...
switch liquor to quality scotch so that it doesn't need to be chilled.
Problem solved.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
...to handle the 40+ wireless clients in the house.
"A plan fiendishly clever in its intricacies"- Homer Simpson
Just use your hardware firewall to blot it from connecting to the net. It's pretty easy - plus I imagine security won't be 100% on those Lucky Gold Star devices so there's likely an open ssh or like port on the things. Hack away.
I think what the science and tech community is complaining about is feature creep. I don't need my toaster to have bluetooth to tell me the toast is done. I need the toaster to last a year or three.
I don't want a fridge that can phone home to the masters and have them pester me about a 'service tech' should come out and vacuum the coils. I can do that myself.
Just because we can put a wifi card in it doesn't mean we should. If you really wanted to make sure your fridge was at a safe temp... you can do that already with an Arduino and a sensor. No vendor lock-in... no calling home to daddy corporation with your personal habits (shopping and usage).
Give me an appliance that are built to last for at least a decade.... and I'll start letting you throw Wifi in it.
I wonder if have any idea in their deranged mind to *lower* the cost of the fridge, but require a monthly subscription for it to work.
Which would open up an opportunity for black-marked "DRM-Removed" household appliances....... "Download 12 month of refrigeration from piratebay!!!"
So what you're saying is that if he drinks enough "quality scotch" that he won't notice that the remainder of his unrefrigerated food has gone bad.
It's also fairly likely that these appliances will be "promiscuous" with regard to trying to find WIFI to connect to, because the average consumer can't be counted-on to be tech-savvy enough to set it up properly, and the average appliance installer probably can't either. Even if someone never configures the WIFI, the fridge will probably be configured, out of the box, to look for WIFI, so anyone within range that sets themselves up as a hotspot will become a perferred network for the appliance.
I'm not 100% against the idea of appliances with some kind of network communication, but I am very much against it with the current IoT mindset, which revolves around people in positions of authority that do not understand the ramifications of the threat. Unfortunately I do not see this changing until these manufacturers lose their shirts over compromised applicances.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
on account of Internet of Hacked. if I had one, I'd block it at the router.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
The thought is that embedded wifi will only ever be a security risk, and could never possibly be of use to anyone.
No, the thought is that embedded WiFi is a security risk and this risk outweighs the benefits. A typical fridge lasts, what, 10-20 years? Do you think LG is going to be back-porting network stack security fixes to Linux for 20 years? Do you think that, even if they wanted to, they will make enough profit on fridges to be able to afford to? Over the last 3-4 years, I've lost track of the number of vulnerabilities that enable anyone who can send a packet to the stack to gain kernel-level privilege. Will LG be fixing all of these for the lifetime of the fridge?
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
"So what you're saying is that if he drinks enough "quality scotch" that he won't notice that the remainder of his unrefrigerated food has gone bad."
There's a reason haggis is closely associated with Scotland.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
My wife asked me why I carried my gun around the house.
"Decepticons", I replied.
She laughed. I laughed. The toaster laughed. I shot the toaster.
Have gnu, will travel.
...has a ton of pull with major manufacturers. Yes, make billions of insecure devices we can run botnets from, please.
I don't want a smart TV. I want a 'smart' appliance of any other type even less.
CyberKender
Apparently Appointed Lord Mayor of There
The Marketing Division of LG is a bunch of mindless jerks who'll be the first against the wall when the revolution comes.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
While I am generally in the same camp, when you look at the slick design Samsung has integrating the communications between the phone, washer/dryer, TV, and Fridge... it opens up interesting possibilities. The display showing the interior of the fridge the last time it was closed is great; the multiple cameras do a good job of sticking together the interior. It is cool that you can "keep watching the game" from the fridge, or know exactly how long the washing machine has left.
For many people, the idea that more milk arrives on your doorstep when you need it is nice as well.
I am at peace with the LAN of Things... just hate the WAN and WLAN of Things... I don't want Things to use wireless communications where I cannot unplug/filter the content reliably.
Give me an appliance that are built to last for at least a decade.... and I'll start letting you throw Wifi in it.
I absolutely agree with everything you said -- but I will just add that it's these "features" that frequently decrease product lifespan.
For example: Why are modern stoves loaded with digital displays and buttons to select temperature, etc.? Why can't I just have a mechanical dial to select temperature? Seriously -- ovens tend to reach temperatures above 500 degees F (much higher if you use self-cleaning). And no matter how much heat shielding you put around stuff, there are going to be major temperature swings, which can't be good for just about any electronic component.
I've known two different people who have had catastrophic failures of stoves occur on holidays, not because of anything wrong with the mechanical elements of the stoves, but because the electronic units failed suddenly. If only they had a manual dial to turn them on, the stoves could have been used fine. Yet it's becoming increasingly difficult to find stoves/ovens without fancy (and completely unnecessary) electronic components.
Similarly, I don't need a washer/dryer that talks to me or has a digital readout of what it's doing with my clothes. Just an old-school dial I can turn and a few mechanical selector buttons or switches is fine, thank you. And my refrigerator definitely doesn't need a screen or wifi. For most appliances, even basic electronics are just more stuff that can wrong with an appliance -- and most of this for very little gain.
Traditional fridges, with just a compressor and ice box up top, typically go a lot longer. The beer fridge in my shed was bought second hand 30 years ago.
Modern fridges, with all their complex internal fans and defrost cycles go about 15 years at best. My ice maker is dead, and I just pulled apart some of the internal plumbing to fix a fan which would be beyond most people and not worth the cost of a repair man.
New fridges with WiFi will go until they die from a bad automated software update. I'd say 8 years. But that will be OK because you will pay by the year that you use it, all controlled by the WiFi.
It is part of advancing technology.