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Hacking into Internet-Connected Light Bulbs

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Re: Hacking into Internet-Connected Light Bulbs

#31

Post by madeofpalk »

DanHulton wrote: post #8
easy_rider wrote: post #3

I just bought 3 Miilight bulbs, and obviously after installing them I was like. Man my neighbours could probably control my lights... I also have a RF remote which operates on 2,4ghz and does not require network authentication. The Wifi bridge does require authentication however. I was thinking of building an RF "cannon" with a directional antenna and see how far I can go. I also got a DVB-T dongle. I should be able…

I can't seem to find anything on the Googles for that product. Is it spelled correctly? Can you give me a link to it? I'm interested in home automation, but all the ones I've looked into so far don't really do it for me.

Have you looked much at the Philips Hue? The combination of a reletively low price (at least compared to LifX) and an open RESTful API, they're my favourite.

Recently I created a little node service that listens to events from our site from RabbitMQ and flashes the Hue lightbulbs when interesting things happen.

Re: Hacking into Internet-Connected Light Bulbs

#32

Post by lucaspiller »

boredinballard wrote: post #24
easy_rider wrote: post #3

I just bought 3 Miilight bulbs, and obviously after installing them I was like. Man my neighbours could probably control my lights... I also have a RF remote which operates on 2,4ghz and does not require network authentication. The Wifi bridge does require authentication however. I was thinking of building an RF "cannon" with a directional antenna and see how far I can go. I also got a DVB-T dongle. I should be able…

The dvbt dongles can usually only make it up to 2.2ghz max.

You can plug a down converter into it so that the 2.4GHz is within range of the RTL-SDR device:

http://blog.cyberexplorer.me/2014/01/sniffing-and-decoding-n...

Re: Hacking into Internet-Connected Light Bulbs

#33

Post by icebraining »

vfclists wrote: post #15

What is the purpose of internet connected light bulbs? Is the internet of things a way to spy on people who remove the batteries from their mobile phones or what? Is it just some excuse to con investors into buying stocks in some insanely valued IPOs? I don't mean to be negative and I understand the value of information in our economic life, but how much info is required from the internet of things to support our hom…

I'm pretty sure the intersection of people worried enough to remove the batteries from their cellphones and willing to buy internet-connected lightbulbs is indistinguishable from the null set.

As for their purpose, well, to the company it's too make money, to the buyers, that's explained by this classic¹ strip of C&H: http://assets.amuniversal.com/6e921050df960131725e005056a954...

¹ yes, it's redundant, I know

Re: Hacking into Internet-Connected Light Bulbs

#34

Post by Ecio78 »

dmd wrote: post #29
__david__ wrote: post #21

> Due to the technical challenges involved, specialist equipment required and general perception that it would be the hardest, we decided to begin our search for vulnerabilities in the intra-bulb 802.15.4 6LoWPAN wireless mesh network. Sentences like that make me happy. I love the hacker spirit.

Wait, intra- bulb? There's a wireless mesh network within different parts of the bulb, not just between the bulbs?

I suppose it's a typo or a mistake between intra and inter

Re: Hacking into Internet-Connected Light Bulbs

#35

Post by wildpeaks »

Udo wrote: post #12

That reminds me of a little accident I had with my home automation interface. In an effort to make the UI accessible from the outside (for me), I forwarded the Raspberry Pi's HTTP server port to the server where I host my normal web stuff. Only I screwed up the proxy rule in the NginX config. All of a sudden, lights and blinds went haywire all over the house. Turns out whoever visited any of my domains at the time go…

Add a webcam and turn it into an art installation :)

Re: Hacking into Internet-Connected Light Bulbs

#36

Post by TeMPOraL »

mschuster91 wrote: post #27
e12e wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're distributing the firmware on-line (for updates) -- why prevent reading the firmware from the chip itself?

Distribute encrypted firmwares instead so that hackers have to first extract the (in this case globally distributed) private key.

Ruining the fun for everyone of us :(.

Seriously, I dislike this trend of making everything a closed and encrypted black box accessible only through official channels (that will disappear in 3 years anyway) for reasons mostly related to money-making and not really security. I think this is will, if continued, slow down the rate of technological progress and development of new ideas.

To quote pg,

"It is by poking about inside current technology that hackers get ideas for the next generation. No thanks, intellectual homeowners may say, we don't need any outside help. But they're wrong. The next generation of computer technology has often—perhaps more often than not—been developed by outsiders."

http://paulgraham.com/gba.html

Re: Hacking into Internet-Connected Light Bulbs

#37

Post by Udo »

wildpeaks wrote: post #35
Udo wrote: post #12

That reminds me of a little accident I had with my home automation interface. In an effort to make the UI accessible from the outside (for me), I forwarded the Raspberry Pi's HTTP server port to the server where I host my normal web stuff. Only I screwed up the proxy rule in the NginX config. All of a sudden, lights and blinds went haywire all over the house. Turns out whoever visited any of my domains at the time go…

Add a webcam and turn it into an art installation :)

Surveillance cams are part of the setup ;) They're old, modified Android phones, actually.

Re: Hacking into Internet-Connected Light Bulbs

#38

Post by cryo »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #36
mschuster91 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Distribute encrypted firmwares instead so that hackers have to first extract the (in this case globally distributed) private key.

Ruining the fun for everyone of us :(. Seriously, I dislike this trend of making everything a closed and encrypted black box accessible only through official channels (that will disappear in 3 years anyway) for reasons mostly related to money-making and not really security. I think this is will, if continued, slow down the rate of technological progress and development of new ideas. To quote pg, " It is by poking abo…

The hacker in me totally agrees with that point of view. It would be awesome to have a chance to decompile firmware and analyse and hack the communication protocols.

But then security is important (which is true for almost all wireless stuff), things are quite different. It's pretty hard to build embedded devices which provide basic means of security without having a poor user experience.

Re: Hacking into Internet-Connected Light Bulbs

#40

Post by mschuster91 »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #36
mschuster91 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Distribute encrypted firmwares instead so that hackers have to first extract the (in this case globally distributed) private key.

Ruining the fun for everyone of us :(. Seriously, I dislike this trend of making everything a closed and encrypted black box accessible only through official channels (that will disappear in 3 years anyway) for reasons mostly related to money-making and not really security. I think this is will, if continued, slow down the rate of technological progress and development of new ideas. To quote pg, " It is by poking abo…

> Ruining the fun for everyone of us :(.

Enough of us have more fun reversing or breaking crypto applications :)

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