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If It Uses Electricity, It Will Connect To the Internet: F-Secure's CRO (theregister.co.uk)
New submitter evolutionary writes: According to F-Secure's Chief Research Officer "IoT is unavoidable. If it uses electricity, it will become a computer. If it uses electricity, it will be online. In future, you will only buy IoT appliances, whether you like it or not, whether you know it or not." F-Secure's new product to help mitigate data leakage, "Sense", is a IoT Firewall, combining a traditional firewall with a cloud service and uses concepts including behaviour-based blocking and device reputation to figure out whether you have insecure devices.
Film at 11.
He's probably right about the push towards having to be online, but I fail to see how an IoT firewall should mitigate it. Especially with the increasing use of IPv6, which means more and more IoT devices will try to get un-NATed access to the internet (and will probably also get their wish granted).
Good luck trying to firewall that.
Sorry, but no. If we want secure IoT devices, we have to demand them. And that means not buying the shoddy, insecure junk that's currently peddled. And I'm not even talking about any gimmicky gadgets from some Aliexpress shops, I'm talking about our "smart" TVs and other "smart" appliances made for dumb people.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Just rip out the antenna so it can't try to get on your wifi or cellular networks. Bam, good old fashioned dumb appliance that will simply do what it was originally designed for instead of trying to integrate a billion little web marketing doodads on to a screen that shouldn't be there in the first place.
"We're sorry, there seems to be a problem connecting to the internet. You will need to complete the WiFi setup before you can make your toast"
I browse on +1 so AC's need not respond, I won't see it.
You assume that you have a choice to connect these things to the internet if you want to use them. Think again.
The makers of such devices have a huge interest in you being connected to the internet. Mostly to send data to them. About you and your consumer habits. Do you have a faint idea how much it's worth to know when you watch TV, what you watch and when and how often you switch between channels? How you choose your TV shows? That's market research you can take straight to the bank. At the very least they will make it as inconvenient as possible to NOT connect that TV to the internet.
At worst they'll get into bed with the DRM crowd that would of course want to know when you watch what content, for how long and if at all possible with how many people in the room.
Buying a device without internet connection? Why would anyone want to make one? Equipping the TV with an internet jack is dirt cheap by now. It's a feature you can put onto that neat feature list we all like so much when we decide for a new TV ("Well, this one has 8 features I don't need, but this one only 7, guess I'll buy the one with the 8!"), and it's, as said before, a good way to siphon valuable and marketable data. OF COURSE every TV will come with network ability. And you will be bothered and badgered until you connect it.
But what about the people without internet? Nobody gives a fuck about Ma and Pa Walton. Blunt and direct, nobody cares about them. They buy a new TV when the old one croaks, not when the next gen comes out and you could see the wrinkles on your favorite star in higher resolution. They are no market. At least none anyone gives a shit about.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Nope, but that's not the way it will happen. The Internet Toaster won't care if my toast is perfect. It WILL care what brand of bread I use and will want to tell me about other wonderful choices in the world of sliced bread. And THAT will take 15 seconds, be associated with an annoying noise, voice and / or blinky light.
Then the company that made the toaster will shut off the server for reasons unclear in the engineering world. I won't be able to put another slice of bread in it until I either buy a subscription to toast.biz or another fucking toaster.
It's not the microprocessor and sensor suite that is the issue (although you can overthink a problem pretty easily these days). It's the connection to the cloud for no apparent gain other than to line somebody else's pockets.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
How about a free toaster if you plug it in for at least 16 hours a day? And by the way it has a microphone and a screen showing adverts on it... And it etches adverts into the toast as well... But it's free!
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC