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We're Surrounded by Billions of Internet-Connected Devices. Can We Trust Them?

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Re: We're Surrounded by Billions of Internet-Connected Devices. Can We Trust Them?

#11

Post by pjc50 »

jodrellblank wrote: post #10
pjc50 wrote: post #7

I don't think they can be trusted to be either secure or reliable or even supported. Any of them could be remotely disabled at any time as the parent company goes out of business. On the other hand, at the moment they're mostly in frivolous devices. As they become ubiquitous this is going to demand EU-level intervention, just like the existing WEEE directive against lockout chips on printer cartridges. Americans will…

caveat the neighbour of the emptor, whatever that is in Latin. Your neighbour’s video doorbell will have the easiest time picking up on your face, but your neighbour’s cloud WiFi AP will surely see your WiFi devices coming and going in WiFi range through the day, and how long will it be before Siri is listening to your upstairs neighbor’s footsteps and telling you they’re unusually quiet for this time of the week and…

> mandatory gig economy of social care?

More likely the Ring camera will spot someone that's not in the national Amazon facial database and urge you to report them to ICE.

Re: We're Surrounded by Billions of Internet-Connected Devices. Can We Trust Them?

#12

Post by ohazi »

stopadvertising wrote: post #2

Every time I try to buy some device that is LAN only and doesn't talk to the net, ever, I usually find zero options or few crappy, expensive choices. Why anyone would install a camera that then talks to some corporation's cloud is beyond me, I have zero interest in that.

The problem is that LAN only can't be verified as long as that LAN also has a route to the public internet. It could be LAN only for the first week so that it passes your initial smoke test, and then goes on to do whatever it wants. Or a firmware update could add new mothership pinging features.

If you want LAN only, you really need to put the device on a LAN that is actually isolated, and use a trusted device to bridge that gap so that you can shuttle commands and responses from your actual network.

I cobbled together my own system that works kind of like this using a raspberry pi and hostapd, and it works quite well for most things.

Re: We're Surrounded by Billions of Internet-Connected Devices. Can We Trust Them?

#13

Post by semiotagonal »

> But Kennedy's biggest concern at the moment is in the area of automotive safety

No doubt. I was pricing out a Mercedes online, and looking through the summary one of the standard features was "over-the-air updates". That is the last thing in the world I want. An expensive car shouldn't be acting like an Android phone. It shouldn't be connected to the internet at all.

If it's updating anything other than the entertainment system, then they're completely nuts. Get the internet out of my car, I already have a phone for that.

Re: We're Surrounded by Billions of Internet-Connected Devices. Can We Trust Them?

#14

Post by ben_w »

jodrellblank wrote: post #10
pjc50 wrote: post #7

I don't think they can be trusted to be either secure or reliable or even supported. Any of them could be remotely disabled at any time as the parent company goes out of business. On the other hand, at the moment they're mostly in frivolous devices. As they become ubiquitous this is going to demand EU-level intervention, just like the existing WEEE directive against lockout chips on printer cartridges. Americans will…

caveat the neighbour of the emptor, whatever that is in Latin. Your neighbour’s video doorbell will have the easiest time picking up on your face, but your neighbour’s cloud WiFi AP will surely see your WiFi devices coming and going in WiFi range through the day, and how long will it be before Siri is listening to your upstairs neighbor’s footsteps and telling you they’re unusually quiet for this time of the week and…

A WiFi hotspot with enough antennas can be run as a wall penetrating radar and measure pose, heart rate, and breathing, so a white-hat system would call the ambulance well before any humans could reach the scene even from the next apartment in the same corridor.

I’m more worried about blackmailers prying into sex lives.

Re: We're Surrounded by Billions of Internet-Connected Devices. Can We Trust Them?

#16

Post by aledalgrande »

semiotagonal wrote: post #13

> But Kennedy's biggest concern at the moment is in the area of automotive safety No doubt. I was pricing out a Mercedes online, and looking through the summary one of the standard features was "over-the-air updates". That is the last thing in the world I want. An expensive car shouldn't be acting like an Android phone. It shouldn't be connected to the internet at all. If it's updating anything other than the enterta…

Isn't that the same as Tesla?

Re: We're Surrounded by Billions of Internet-Connected Devices. Can We Trust Them?

#17

Post by Ensorceled »

aledalgrande wrote: post #16
semiotagonal wrote: post #13

> But Kennedy's biggest concern at the moment is in the area of automotive safety No doubt. I was pricing out a Mercedes online, and looking through the summary one of the standard features was "over-the-air updates". That is the last thing in the world I want. An expensive car shouldn't be acting like an Android phone. It shouldn't be connected to the internet at all. If it's updating anything other than the enterta…

Isn't that the same as Tesla?

I think the person you are replying to would also dislike this feature in a Tesla.

Re: We're Surrounded by Billions of Internet-Connected Devices. Can We Trust Them?

#19

Post by semiotagonal »

Ensorceled wrote: post #17
aledalgrande wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't that the same as Tesla?

I think the person you are replying to would also dislike this feature in a Tesla.

That's true, I'm not looking to buy a Tesla. I'd include touchscreens as another problem but that's separate from the article's subject.

Re: We're Surrounded by Billions of Internet-Connected Devices. Can We Trust Them?

#20

Post by wil421 »

CapitalistCartr wrote: post #5

IOT devices use standard, commonly available boards and chips, which are meant for widely varied applications, so offer wifi/Internet connectivity easily. So companies can add that "feature" painlessly by applying a snippet of (usually OSS) code. And collecting all the customer data they can is a bonus. No penalty of zero security, major upside if they sell it. This is dangerous to all of us, even if you don't own an…

My brother and father in law bought a bunch cheap WiFi security cameras off of amazon. People online were complaining they phone home all kinds of stuff to Chinese IPs. My father in laws other cameras are Nest which phone to Google but it’s a selling point.

I was going to put the Chinese cameras on a subnet but I don’t want to complicate his network. My father in law has 3 routers with 3 WiFi networks competing with each other; office, living room and outside but that’s a story for another day...at least I got him to replace it with a UniFi AP.

I like UniFi protect because all the data stays at my house and their cameras are strictly no subscriptions.

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