The US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) announced on Friday that it has approved a settlement with TRENDnet, Inc. over lax security features in its line of SecurView cameras. The FTC said on Friday that it has approved a final order settling charges against the company, whose cameras were found to be poorly secured against external attackers, who could access them and use them to spy on the homes and private lives of hundreds of consumers. [See also: Apple Store Favorite IZON Cameras Riddled with Holes] The FTC complaint stems from a February, 2012 case in which independent security analysts with the web site Console Cowboys published details on how a firmware flaw allowed authentication for Internet-connected SecurView cameras to be bypassed, giving any Internet user (with the know-how) the ability to view the surveillance camera’s live feed. The Commission first announced a settlement with TRENDnet, a Torrance, California company, in September of […]
smart home
In Next Phase: Web Tracking Cookies Grow Legs
It’s easy to focus on the low hanging fruit in the Internet of Things revolution – the Internet-connected thermostats, connected vehicles and lawn sprinklers that you can manage from the Web. But the biggest changes are yet to come – as powerful, wearable technology, remote sensors and powerful data analytics combine to map and record our every waking (and sleeping) moment. I got a glimpse of that reading this article over at the blog StreetFightMag.com, a site that concentrates on the hyperlocal marketing sector. Hyperlocal was a big thing about six or seven years ago, as online media outfit (and their advertisers) decided that consumers were losing interest in the thin gruel that online mass-media provided, but remained intensely interested in local news and affairs. Alas, capitalizing on the relatively small-scale opportunities in ‘hyperlocal’ proved harder than anyone thought, as this week’s decision to shutter AOL’s remaining Patch web […]
Parsing Google’s Internet of Things Acquisitions
Google has gone on an acquisition tear in the last six weeks that has many tech industry watchers wondering about the company’s future direction – particularly when it comes to the Internet of Things. Since the beginning of the fourth quarter, 2013, Google has acquired 14 companies with the latest, a $650 million buy of UK-based artificial intelligence software firm DeepMind Technologies hitting the wires yesterday. In addition to the DeepMind buy, Google spent $40 million on Flutter, a maker of gesture recognition technology and $23 million on FlexyCore, maker of the DroidBooster App for Android. Earlier this month, it plunked $3.2 billion down for super hot smart home gear maker Nest. Google’s size makes the exact amount spent on the other acquisitions is something of a matter of speculation. Google only has to disclose transactions that are deemed ‘material’ to the company’s finances – a number somewhere between $10m […]
You Can Build An Open Source NEST Clone In One Day? Uh Oh!
I’ve been amazed at the herds of Johnny Come Lately’s who have glom’d onto the amazing Nest thermostat since Google purchased the company that makes it, Nest Labs, for a whopping $3.2 billion last week. Nest – and even its sister Protect smoke alarm – were hardly new, but that didn’t stop CNN from posting a ‘gee whiz’ video in the days that followed that had all the ‘we were here first’ excitement of a hand-held broadcast from the floor of CES. That – even though Nest is coming up on its third birthday and its cousin, the Protect, was released to considerable fanfare in October. The question for Google, of course, is ‘how is Nest really worth?’ I use one at my house, and I think it’s gorgeous and smart – but $3.2 billion? That’s why I was interested to check out this article over at Postscapes.com about an open source […]
When The Internet of Things Attacks! Parsing The IoT Botnet Story
I spent most of last week at a conference in Florida going deep on the security of critical infrastructure – you know: the software that runs power plants and manufacturing lines. (More to come on that!) While there, the security firm Proofpoint released a statement saying that it had evidence that a spam botnet was using “Internet of Things” devices. The company said on January 16 that a spam campaign totaling 750,000 malicious emails originated with a botnet made up of “more than 100,000 everyday consumer gadgets” including home networking routers, multi media centers, televisions and at least one refrigerator.” Proofpoint claims it is the “first time the industry has reported actual proof of such a cyber attack involving common appliances.” [Read: “Missing in action at Black Hat: the PC.”] Heady stuff – but is it true? It’s hard to know for sure. As with all these reports, it’s important […]
