Why are new devices dependent on the Internet but made with little forethought?
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Re: Why are new devices dependent on the Internet but made with little forethought?
#2Why are new devices dependent on the internet but made without a thought to the security of the user?
Re: Why are new devices dependent on the Internet but made with little forethought?
#3I wonder--if some years ago--people were asking the same question about electricity
Re: Why are new devices dependent on the Internet but made with little forethought?
#4I stopped reading at Try to recall a time back when the Internet didn't exist... Where things like cars and phones functioned on their own in a much more reliable manner.
I grew up in the 80s and have owned several cars from that era. They were significantly less reliable than cars of today. Carburetors were still present (though being phased out) and there were always vacuum hoses that, when they leaked, caused your car to run like crap.
Also, phones: Cellphones were extremely expensive and unreliable. Landlines were extremely unreliable at reaching other humans because as often as not, the recipient wasn't home. Also, I remember all kinds of problems with landline wiring leading to noisy connections. Also, unless you were calling a close neighbor, you paid high per-minute charges.
It's really hard to find something that was better in the pre-internet era. Cars and phones aren't it.
Re: Why are new devices dependent on the Internet but made with little forethought?
#5So, once upon a time, nothing emitted or depended on receiving EM waves. Then, we learned how to use electricity and started putting it into everything. Then, and only then, did we start developing government regulation to make sure that your new device for sale didn't broadcast EM waves that interfered with any other devices in the vicinity.
We are getting to the point where we will need an Underwriter Labs-style independent body to say, to anybody selling an internet-connected device, "your device is not secure enough to be sold; you are forbidden to sell it until you get your security house in order".
This wouldn't solve every problem, but it would solve a lot of it, simply because the cost required to pay for good security would cause most IoT devices that don't really need it, to get rid of it, in order to cut cost and reduce time to market. Only if it if really added a lot of value would the maker be willing to pay for good security; that does not include most IoT today.
Re: Why are new devices dependent on the Internet but made with little forethought?
#6Many or most aren’t. I have a bunch of home automation devices and I’m planning for more. Most of them don’t require any internet connectivity, the only one that does (I still have Alexa connected to Home Assistant, planning to replace her with Rhasspy but didn’t find the time yet) is purely an extra method of controlling things so nothing breaks without internet.
I see people buying internet-required devices as the same people who buy the registry cleaners. They don’t know enough about computers themselves, and the advertorials/computer magazines don’t do them any favors.
Re: Why are new devices dependent on the Internet but made with little forethought?
#7I stopped reading at Try to recall a time back when the Internet didn't exist... Where things like cars and phones functioned on their own in a much more reliable manner. I grew up in the 80s and have owned several cars from that era. They were significantly less reliable than cars of today. Carburetors were still present (though being phased out) and there were always vacuum hoses that, when they leaked, caused your…
The internet didn't fix these things, fuel injection, electronic ignition, and digital signal processing / denser silicon integration did.
Re: Why are new devices dependent on the Internet but made with little forethought?
#8I stopped reading at Try to recall a time back when the Internet didn't exist... Where things like cars and phones functioned on their own in a much more reliable manner. I grew up in the 80s and have owned several cars from that era. They were significantly less reliable than cars of today. Carburetors were still present (though being phased out) and there were always vacuum hoses that, when they leaked, caused your…
Video games that didn’t need software updates :)
Re: Why are new devices dependent on the Internet but made with little forethought?
#9I stopped reading at Try to recall a time back when the Internet didn't exist... Where things like cars and phones functioned on their own in a much more reliable manner. I grew up in the 80s and have owned several cars from that era. They were significantly less reliable than cars of today. Carburetors were still present (though being phased out) and there were always vacuum hoses that, when they leaked, caused your…
The internet didn't fix these things, fuel injection, electronic ignition, and digital signal processing / denser silicon integration did.
Irrespective of why, cars and phones did not function in a more reliable manner back then. The statement is false.
Re: Why are new devices dependent on the Internet but made with little forethought?
#10Another way to rephrase the question is: why don't
networked devices require signoff from a professionally licensed engineer on its specific software implementation before it goes to market?
You see "forethought" in devices offered to the public when regulation DEMANDS it: think cars, bridges, medical devices, because (or so it's been rationalized), the public needs accountability (a named, professionally licensed, buck-stops-with-them head to roll) when that product can cause harm.
But software harms TOO!. Think privacy, banking, relationships. Those can be harmed. It's always felt to me like a historical accident that networked devices, really most software in general, slipped past this accountability requirement. Without a specific , named accountable person, security seems to fall into the not-my-problem phenomenon, and continues generates articles like from the OP.
In the imagined future where signoff from professional engineers was required, you'd see pushback against a vendor by the engineer until the implementation was secure, because the engineer's licensure was on the line until it was secure. And the vendor couldn't just "shop" for a favorable signoff, because every engineer would be held to the same ethical standard and penalty.