smart home

Set Top Boxes To Surveillance: Cisco Aims To Be IoT’s 600lb Gorilla

Cisco Systems is one of the biggest ecosystem players with its eyes trained on the Internet of Things. This makes sense. After all, the company made its fortune selling the gear – routers and switches – that make the Internet hum, and that helped extend Internet connectivity to homes and businesses.   Along the way, Cisco has been aggressive about acquiring new and promising technologies that promise to grow its top line. took some bad turns – unsuccessfully branching into consumer electronics in 2009 with the acquisition of Pure Digital, maker of the Flip camcorder, and Linksys, a maker of home networking gear, in 2003. The company discontinued the Flip product and sold Linksys to Belkin earlier this year amid a major corporate shake-up designed to re-focus the company. Now, with the next wave (Cisco calls it the 4th) of Internet connectivity upon us – namely: the “Internet of Things” (or […]

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Report: Crematoriums To Caterpillars Shodan Reveals Internet Of Things

What kind of stuff is lurking out there on the vast (and growing) Internet of Things? A recent story in Forbes makes the point that its a lot more varied than you might think – everything from Caterpillar trucks to public school classrooms to a crematorium. And “yes,” I said “crematorium.” The idea that surveillance cameras can be accessed from the public Internet isn’t really new. Security researchers have been showing off ways to sidestep security features for IP enabled surveillance cameras for years. We wrote last week about the Federal Trade Commission’s case against a California company, TRENDNet, which made a line of balky, in secure home surveillance gear. But Kashmir Hill makes the point in her story that surveillance cameras are just the tip of the iceberg. Hill interviewed security researchers and professional Shodan jockeys, who use that hardware focused search engine to uncover supposedly secure equipment and industrial control […]

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With Settlement, FTC Issues Warning On IP-Enabled Cameras

The U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) made one of its strongest statements to date on the issue of consumer privacy in the fast-emerging market for “smart” electronics: settling a complaint with the maker of SecurView, a line of home surveillance cameras that, it turned out, were just as easily used to spy into the homes of SecurView customers. In a statement on Wednesday, the FTC said that it settled a complaint against TRENDnet, the maker of the SecurView home security cameras. The FTC had charged the Torrance, California company with misrepresenting the security of its products. TRENDnet sold “faulty software that left (the cameras) open to online viewing” by anyone who knew the device’s IP address. Under the terms of its settlement with the Commission, TRENDnet must stop misrepresenting the “security, privacy, confidentiality, or integrity of the information that its cameras or other devices transmit,” as well as “the extent […]

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SANS’ Pescatore: Security Needs Rethink For Internet Of Things

Our friends over at InfoSecurity Magazine have an interesting interview with SANS’ Director of Emerging Security Trends John Pescatore about security and The Internet of Things. Pescatore gets a somewhat skeptical hearing from the enterprise-focused IT security publication. (“Granted, it’s unlikely that anyone would be sending a car an email with a malicious executable, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t threat vectors for hackers to exploit,” InfoSecurity opines, by way of an introduction. Oh really?) But Pescatore brings a “deep field” view to this topic, noting that the security issues around IoT are already upon us in the spent almost two decades as Gartner’s Obi-Wan Kenobi for security, where he advised companies and technology vendors on the best way to navigate the shifting sands of the IT security space. Speaking to InfoSecurity, Pescatore says the 100,000 foot message is: ‘let’s learn from our mistakes.’ Specifically, that means not looking at intelligent devices, including […]

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The Stylish Sensor: Canary Poised To Take Flight

We’re still in the early days of the fast-emerging Internet of Things, but we can already identify some areas where inexpensive, remote sensors and other IP-enabled stuff will be transformative. Entertainment is one – and we’re already seeing the emergence of “smart TVs” that upset traditional boundaries between personal computing devices and viewing devices. Another market that’s being shaken is the one for home security systems. Anyone who has visited an electronics store or discount warehouse has seen packages of inexpensive, wi-fi enabled cameras that can be used to monitor the goings-on in and about your home “Scarface style.” Those DIY systems pose a threat to firms like ADT, GE and Tyco, which have been selling home security systems and monitoring services for decades. But you’re really setting the “paranoia” bar pretty high if you want to ask someone to install all those cameras, wire them up and then monitor […]

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