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Smart Lights, Speakers, Thermostats, Cameras and Other IoT Devices Are Being Increasingly Used as a Means For Harassment, Monitoring, and Revenge (nytimes.com)
Smart home devices are supposed to bring convenience to people's lives, but increasingly, their unintended consequences are surfacing, and are being exploited to harass others, an investigation by The New York Times has found. [Editor's note: the link maybe paywalled; syndicated source.] From the report: In more than 30 interviews with The New York Times, domestic abuse victims, their lawyers, shelter workers and emergency responders described how the technology was becoming an alarming new tool. Abusers -- using apps on their smartphones, which are connected to the internet-enabled devices -- would remotely control everyday objects in the home, sometimes to watch and listen, other times to scare or show power. Even after a partner had left the home, the devices often stayed and continued to be used to intimidate and confuse.
For victims and emergency responders, the experiences were often aggravated by a lack of knowledge about how smart technology works, how much power the other person had over the devices, how to legally deal with the behavior and how to make it stop. "People have started to raise their hands in trainings and ask what to do about this," Erica Olsen, director of the Safety Net Project at the National Network to End Domestic Violence, said of sessions she holds about technology and abuse. She said she was wary of discussing the misuse of emerging technologies because "we don't want to introduce the idea to the world, but now that it's become so prevalent, the cat's out of the bag."
For victims and emergency responders, the experiences were often aggravated by a lack of knowledge about how smart technology works, how much power the other person had over the devices, how to legally deal with the behavior and how to make it stop. "People have started to raise their hands in trainings and ask what to do about this," Erica Olsen, director of the Safety Net Project at the National Network to End Domestic Violence, said of sessions she holds about technology and abuse. She said she was wary of discussing the misuse of emerging technologies because "we don't want to introduce the idea to the world, but now that it's become so prevalent, the cat's out of the bag."
Internet of Crap. They usually are some cheap things released onto the market without serious security protection(who didn't see THAT coming ?). I'll never use them.
As any Slashdotter knows, smart lights, switches, and power relays are poorly regulated and secured.
If a coordinated attack were to take place against thousands, or millions of these devices,
they absolutely could be used to shutter an electric grid in under a minute by inducing a triplen wave:
https://electricalbaba.com/tri...
Good people go to bed earlier.
You have 2 competitors and one has no security, they don't sell any products and the bar is raised.
Wtf is 2018.
You are right, it is 2018. So you have 100 competitors and one has security but costs more than the other 99 knockoffs that all came from the same factory. They don't sell any products and go out of business. That is 2018.
"Increasingly", "many", "more"
How many? How do you know?
It makes a great story, but "many" of these kinds of stories don't have much to back them up, as to the size of the problem.
It might be helpful to say "X percent of DV cases in {area} in 2017 involved smart home devices" or something.
Hate to victim blame, but anyone who buys an IoT thingy and actually plugs it in to the internet is all but asking for it.
Not all victims bought or installed the IoT devices in the first place. This is often a case of an abusive person that installs an IoT device in their (ex) home to keep their (ex) partner under surveillance or to harass them.
FTA:
Unplug the bad device from the network... as in unplug that wire that isn't power. No wire because WiFi?... realistically 99% of the IoT stuff is WiFi, do this to keep it disconnected:
1. Change the password on your WiFi router, and do not update it on your IoT devices.
2. If you don't know how to do that, throw away your old WiFi router and buy a new one, which will force you to make a new password.
Yes, there is someone out there making their partner a veritable slave in their home. But we've taken this so extreme you won't actually ever encounter it in life situation and act like it is everywhere
The easier it becomes to do a thing, the easier it becomes to do an uncharacteristic thing in a moment of weakness. Little girls don't lock their diaries because even they think the lock can't be broken, any more than people lock their front doors because they think their lock can be broken. It's because lots of people will just walk in, and plenty of people will just take something that isn't nailed down. A simple lock that's easily defeated stops the impulsive, if not the determined.
These systems are so vulnerable that they practically invite snooping. If someone can get into your camera just by googling the stuff written on it, the odds go way up that they will. This is actually true of malicious actors as well as the bored and curious; a notable portion of them are incompetent.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"