connected devices

Updated: A New Lobbying Group is fighting Right to Repair Laws

Consumer advocates and proponents of right to repair laws in 17 states have a new enemy to worry about. The Security Innovation Center, with backing of powerful tech industry groups, is arguing that letting consumers fix their own devices will empower hackers.*

Visitors to the Consumer Electronics Show

NIST Floats Internet of Things Cybersecurity Standards

There are plenty of standards that can be used to help secure The Internet of Things, but not much evidence that they’re being used, according to NIST, which calls on government and industry to settle on conforming standards for IoT products in a new report. 

Voice Assistants

EFF Seeks Right to Jailbreak Alexa, Voice Assistants

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is asking the Library of Congress to give owners of voice assistant devices like Amazon’s Echo, Google Home and other voice assistants the right to “jailbreak” the devices: freeing them from content control features designed to prevent users from running unauthorized code on those platforms. 

iPhone disassembled

Smartphone Users Tracked Even with GPS, WiFi Turned Off

A team of researchers from Princeton has demonstrated that they can track the location of smartphone users even when location services like GPS and WiFi are turned off.

Consumer Reports: Flaws Make Samsung, Roku TVs Vulnerable

Consumer Reports warns that smart TVs by Samsung and other vendors are vulnerable to disorienting remote attacks.