Title is bad, but the piece is good
I found a backdoor into my bed
21–30 of 403 posts
Re: I found a backdoor into my bed
#22The state of the product's security wasn't unexpected. I was, however, shocked by this part: > I was willing to overlook: > The bed costs $2,000 > It won’t function if the internet goes down > Basic features are behind an additional $19/mo subscription > The bed’s only controls are via mobile app Nothing about this bed should depend on off-site servers. Nothing about the product should necessitate a subscription fee.…
Don't blame the market. Blame the engineers who know the risks of such foolishness that lack the courage and conviction to stand up to decision makers.
Both. I also blame the guy willing to spend $2,000 for a glorified blanket that also needs a monthly subscription to work properly.
Re: I found a backdoor into my bed
#23The state of the product's security wasn't unexpected. I was, however, shocked by this part: > I was willing to overlook: > The bed costs $2,000 > It won’t function if the internet goes down > Basic features are behind an additional $19/mo subscription > The bed’s only controls are via mobile app Nothing about this bed should depend on off-site servers. Nothing about the product should necessitate a subscription fee.…
Software is devil-is-in-the-details to the extreme, and maximally opaque even to programmer-capable consumers, much less general consumers. And all tech companies are now founded with zero regard for good behavior. I mean, they don't even do minimal amounts of customer service, which is the bare minimum of having regard for your customers. In general, the IoT industry has suffered and adopters get burned over and ove…
> Perhaps the rigor that Medtronic and similar device companies are subjected to would apply, but I'm not sure those regulations cover information security and privacy.
As someone on an insulin pump they do. Iirc they have reps showing up at hacker conferences looking for red teams.
Definitely agree with your worries generally though.
Re: I found a backdoor into my bed
#24Earlier quoted context omitted.
The market deserves some blame here.
How easy is it to know what works when the network is down before purchasing? Do you expect everyone to take down their wifi after purchase to test and return if it doesn't work? Maybe there should be a mandatory information sheet such as listing all functionality that stops working without a network connection.
Consumer protection regulation with mandatory labeling would be a good answer but, at least in the US, we're not going to have anything like that anytime soon (if ever).
I don't have the enthusiasm to start a competing company. It sounds like the barrier to entry to the market is fairly low, the tech isn't unproven, and there appears to be a ton of margin.
I assume Eight Sleep has a patent moat.
Re: I found a backdoor into my bed
#25Earlier quoted context omitted.
The market deserves some blame here.
My partner has difficulty sleep unless it is the perfect environment (black out curtains, noise cancellation, sound bath, temperature), and is more prone to the effects of a single bad nights sleep. For people like her, $20/mo + $2000 fee is a small price to pay for a solution to a very difficult problem. I would of course, attempt to veto unnecessary IoT devices and subscriptions for usage, but this would be a fight…
They're not complaining about the price. They're complaining about the high price for a bed where those high priced features stop working if your internet goes down, or there is a server outage, or you stop paying a monthly fee, or the original company goes bankrupt.
Re: I found a backdoor into my bed
#26I have an EightSleep from before their enshittification into a subscription model. It is a good piece of hardware, but I can no longer recommend it because the software is so crappy. I checked the logs on my router and found that it was streaming tons of data to servers even when I wasn't using it. I have no idea why it would stream that much data since the trivial sensors it has shouldn't be producing that much data even if it had multi Hz sampling. I can't tell if this is incompetence or some sort of malfeasance where they are secretly recording audio data via motion sensors and streaming that.
Re: I found a backdoor into my bed
#27The state of the product's security wasn't unexpected. I was, however, shocked by this part: > I was willing to overlook: > The bed costs $2,000 > It won’t function if the internet goes down > Basic features are behind an additional $19/mo subscription > The bed’s only controls are via mobile app Nothing about this bed should depend on off-site servers. Nothing about the product should necessitate a subscription fee.…
Don't blame the market. Blame the engineers who know the risks of such foolishness that lack the courage and conviction to stand up to decision makers.
I used to work for match.com and we had a readout in the office that streamed customer feedback. 90% of it was people who had paid subscriptions complaining about intrusive advertising on the site or in the app while logged in.
I raised this at a meeting and was told that they weren‘t going to change it because it made too much money.
I’m sure engineers raised issues about this as well and were shut down by the business people who are more than happy to risk customer satisfaction and security if it means more revenue.
Re: I found a backdoor into my bed
#28Using the aquarium chillers is really smart! Just need someone to mfg the mattress membrane covers.
I didn't realize they've come down so much in price. Another really useful application would be to hook it up to pads used to ice joints post joint surgery. I was sold a $100+ dollar medical device which was basically a water pump in a cooler chest (like one of those Polar ones) that circulated water through some pads. I had to refill it every hour or so with ice. This is right after a knee surgery so caring the cooler around was literally painful. Having it connected to the aquarium chiller would have been great.
Re: I found a backdoor into my bed
#29> but the eight sleep sure does harvest people’s bed data, and occasionally tweet about how they’re watching you sleep
[Followed by a screenshot of the EightSleep CEO publicly tweeting about SF sleep data in Nov 2023.]
This is reason enough to not patronize this business. What a creep.
Re: I found a backdoor into my bed
#30Earlier quoted context omitted.
The market deserves some blame here.
My partner has difficulty sleep unless it is the perfect environment (black out curtains, noise cancellation, sound bath, temperature), and is more prone to the effects of a single bad nights sleep. For people like her, $20/mo + $2000 fee is a small price to pay for a solution to a very difficult problem. I would of course, attempt to veto unnecessary IoT devices and subscriptions for usage, but this would be a fight…
How in the world does this necessitate a subscription? All of these things can work without centralization, setup once, and contained entirely within the home.