connected devices Archives

connected devices

Heartbleed: Technology Monoculture’s Second Act

April 22, 2014 Paul Roberts

Say ‘technology monoculture’ and most people (who don’t look at you cross-eyed or say ‘God bless you!’) will say “Microsoft” or “Windows” or “Microsoft Windows.” That makes sense. Windows still runs on more than 90% of all desktop systems, long after Redmond’s star is rumored to have dimmed next to that of Apple. Microsoft is the poster child for the dangers and benefits of a monoculture. Hardware makers and application developers have a single platform to write to – consumers have confidence that the software and hardware they buy will “just work” so long as they’re running some version of Windows. The downside, of course, is that the Windows monoculture has also been a boon to bad guys, who can tailor exploits to one operating system or associated application (Office, Internet Explorer) and be confident that 9 of 10 systems their malicious software encounters will at least be running some version of the […]

Cisco To Invest $1B Building Secure Cloud For Internet Of Things

March 25, 2014 Paul Roberts

Cisco Systems announced that it will invest more than $1 billion building what it calls an “Intercloud” – a network of cloud platforms that will support a variety of new business applications, including those supporting connected devices that are part of the Internet of Things. The company said on Monday that the new initiative will greatly expand its cloud business over the next two years and provide APIs (application program interfaces) that will allow application developers to rapidly create new products suitable for use in the enterprise or by resellers and service providers. A range of Cisco’s existing partners have committed to deliver products or services for Cisco’s Intercloud Cloud Services including the Australian firm Telstra, Allstream, a Canadian communications provider and Ingram Micro Inc.a major technology wholesaler. Services provider SunGard Availability Services and Integralis have signed on, as has the IT consulting firm Wipro Ltd. “Together, we have the […]

Linux IoT Worm Still Alive And Mining Virtual Coins

March 20, 2014 Paul Roberts

A few months ago we wrote about a new Internet worm notable because it spread between devices running the Linux operating systems, and because it had the ability to infect a range of non-PC devices including set top boxes. Symantec was quick to suggest that the worm, Linux.Darlloz, was the first “Internet of Things” malware. Now, three months later, Symantec is updating the story: noting that Darlloz is still out there, and seems to have been put to use mining for virtual currencies. Writing on Symantec’s blog on Thursday, analyst Karou Hayashi said that researchers there discovered a new variant of Darlloz in January that included code changes and improvements from the version discovered at the end of 2013. Darlloz is versatile: it can run on devices using a variety of architectures, including the common Intel x86, but also hardware running the ARM, MIPS and PowerPC architectures. Those are more common […]

Internet of Things and the Enterprise (InfoGraphic)

March 18, 2014 Paul Roberts

I’m a big fan of infographics – at least when they’re well done and present insightful facts. That’s why I’m always on the lookout for good ones – especially when the subject is The Internet of Things. So I was interested to come across the latest contribution from IoT firm Xively (part of the company LogMeIn), which pulls together some factoids on IoT’s potential in the enterprise. Among the interesting statistics gussied up in this one: an Economist Intelligence Unit data point saying that 95 % of C-level executives expect their company to be using the Internet of Things in three years time, while 74% of them predicting that it will play a ‘major role’ in their business in that time. That’s kind of astounding when you consider it: executives saying ‘Here is this new kind of technology that we barely use now. But in three years, it will be […]

Is Refrigerator Spam Really In Our Future?

March 12, 2014 Paul Roberts

I came across an interesting post over on Wearable World News today titled “The Danger of Smart Spam In the Internet of Things.” The article, by Jessica Groopman, ran yesterday and provides a kind of conceptual overview of the security and IoT space. I think Goodman gets it mostly right: she talks about the proliferation of device types and platforms that will (or already does) characterize the Internet of Things. With hundreds of billions (compared with hundreds of millions) of Internet connected endpoints, cyber criminals, hacktivists and other bad actors have an even greater ability to create armies of compromised endpoints and harness their collective power in attacks. Goodman also gets it right when she notes that many “smart” devices run commodity operating systems like Linux and don’t require lots of special effort to reverse engineer. Finally, IoT devices frequently are low power and embedded systems that lack the processing […]