In-brief: a new report out from Harvard Business School that looks at the business impact of Internet of Things technologies cautions that security and privacy concerns can’t be ignored but will, instead, be an important differentiator for consumers.
Internet of Things
Report: Fear of lawsuits chills car hack research | TheHill
In-brief: The Department of Transportation is weighing policies governing independent security researchers’ work on connected vehicles. But security industry experts worry that overreach could put a chill on independent research on connected cars.
Cisco Talks up IoT as Disruptor, Unveils New Security Portfolio
In-brief: Cisco Systems new CEO Chuck Robbins talked up the disruptive potential of IoT, while also announcing new Cisco products geared at key verticals and a new security portfolio for IoT.
Vigilante botnet highlights woeful state of embedded device security
A mysterious piece of software, dubbed Wifatch, has been infecting tens of thousands of Linux-based home routers and, according to experts at Symantec, attempts to secure them from attack. But Wifatch’s benevolent intentions shouldn’t obscure its malicious actions, or the security problems that it takes advantage of. The malicious software runs on vulnerable, Linux-based home routers. There, it removes other malware infections, disables vulnerable services like Telnet and even prompts users to update their administrator user name and password to prevent compromise, according to a post on Symantec’s blog. But the malware is still spreading between vulnerable systems without the owners consent and could easily be pressed into service distributing spam or malicious software, experts note. According to Symantec, Wifatch is likely spreading between infected devices by targeting exposed Telnet interfaces and using brute force password attacks to gain access to the devices. Tens of thousands of devices may have been infected […]
Pentagon looks to analog monitoring to secure IoT
In-brief: DARPA is directing $36m for the first stage of a program called LADS – Leveraging the Analog Domain for Security, which is looking into analog methods of cyber threat detection, including power consumption monitoring.
