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The Tapplock IoT padlock has multiple security vulnerabilities

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Re: The Tapplock IoT padlock has multiple security vulnerabilities

#41

> Canadian internet of things (IoT) startup Tapplock learned the hard way why you should never knit your own cryptography If they wanted to knit their own cryptography, then cryptocurrency and ICO was their place to be.

Don't give them any ideas. Or they will want to save lock/unlock data to a blockchain, then read from it in order to unlock your padlock.

Re: The Tapplock IoT padlock has multiple security vulnerabilities

#42
post #19

Genuinely curious how people still manage to fuck up this kind of super basic secure coding practices

IoT devices are generally built and programmed by electronic engineers. They have no knowledge about software security and neither do they care.

They are generally designed by electronic engineers and programmed by programmers. And most programmers don't care about security all that much.

Re: The Tapplock IoT padlock has multiple security vulnerabilities

#43
post #33

Genuinely curious how people still manage to fuck up this kind of super basic secure coding practices

Silicon Valley prefers teams to have epic backstories, not experience. A first-year dropout from MIT and a Thiel fellow are much more likely to get funded than an engineer with a state uni BSc+25 years industry experience plus a former sales manager in the same industry.

Aka the "Nerd Rockstar Bias"

Re: The Tapplock IoT padlock has multiple security vulnerabilities

#44
post #19

Genuinely curious how people still manage to fuck up this kind of super basic secure coding practices

IoT devices are generally built and programmed by electronic engineers. They have no knowledge about software security and neither do they care.

While EEs are part to blame, the other half is just graduated (or "bootcamp graduated" - let's put it this way) developers that know all the node.js shortcuts but don't know about the fundamentals of internet security.

Re: The Tapplock IoT padlock has multiple security vulnerabilities

#45

> Web programmer? Don’t make account IDs easy to guess. In an otherwise secure system, account numbers that go 1,2,3… shouldn’t be a problem, but why make it easy? Is that the best advice to web programmers they can give based on this story? That's the "obscurity" part in the security by obscurity scheme. If you've got your security otherwise nailed down fine, some obscurity on the top doesn't hurt: security-in-depth…

> Your authentication state is not "logged in", it's "logged in as user X". So the code that decides whether a client can see a specific page can and should (!) depend on what specifically you're authenticated as. "the code that decides whether a client can see a specific page" should not care about authentication, this is authorization issue. I see these things conflated too often. Identification, Authentication and…

Sometimes I wonder how technology can work, when so many people working in the field are unable to grasp the basic concepts of it

Re: The Tapplock IoT padlock has multiple security vulnerabilities

#46

Utterly horrifying, but ultimately irrelevant. No lock of this size is meant to be anything other than inconvenient to open. Angle grinders are cheap, and more easily wielded than HTTP request crafting.

The issue isn't that you could break most any padlock using heavy duty tools, the issue is that you can break any Tapplock without arousing suspicion.

Consider using it for your gym-locker. The changing room is typically occupied by at least some people whenever the gym is open so if someone is pulling out a bolt-cutter or an angle grinder it would probably lead to someone notifying the gym-employees/police. Meanwhile someone who just walks up to the lock and seemingly opens it must be legit and goes unnoticed.

Re: The Tapplock IoT padlock has multiple security vulnerabilities

#47
post #19

Genuinely curious how people still manage to fuck up this kind of super basic secure coding practices

IoT devices are generally built and programmed by electronic engineers. They have no knowledge about software security and neither do they care.

That’s wrong. An engineer has a couple managers above. Product, project, platform manager. You name it. Engineer is just another blue collar worker nowadays. No decision making power. I was not allowed to save company $40k, they told that numbers shouldn’t interest me. If management says, we need no encryption and authentifition, it’s totally ok. I just print their emails with this statement for later.

Re: The Tapplock IoT padlock has multiple security vulnerabilities

#48
post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IoT devices are generally built and programmed by electronic engineers. They have no knowledge about software security and neither do they care.

While true in many cases, in my experience it's not only the engineers. Unless you have the senior managers on board as well, they'll just lean on the engineers to "ship now".

And those managers don't care either because their area is in electronics not software.

IoT is electronics people coming into the software world and building software like it's the 90s.

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