The U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) used a one-day workshop to highlight security and privacy issues prompted by so-called “Internet of Things.” But attendees at the event may have walked away with a more ambiguous message, as prominent technologists and industry representatives questioned whether conventional notions of privacy had much relevance in a world populated by billions of Internet-connected devices. “I don’t feel like privacy is dead,” keynote speaker Vint Cerf, a Vice President and Chief Internet Evangelist at Google, told an audience at the FTC workshop. “I do feel like privacy will be increasingly difficult for us to achieve,” Cerf warned. And Cerf wasn’t alone in wondering whether that might not be such a bad thing – or even that unusual. “Is privacy an anomaly?” Cerf wondered aloud, recalling his experience living in a small, German town where the “postmaster knew what everyone was doing.” Our modern concept of being ‘alone […]
Cloud
Supply Chain Transparency Doesn’t Extend To Security
We live in an ever-more unstable world in which massive disruptions, whether natural or man-made, are a frequent occurrence. Companies that make everything from aircraft to mobile phones to cappuccino need to be nimble – sidestepping global calamities that might idle assembly lines or leave customers without their morning cup of coffee. As in other areas, the benefits of technology advancements like cheap, cloud based computing, remote sensors and mobility are transforming the way that companies manage their vast, global network of suppliers. These days, supply chain transparency is all the rage – allowing companies to share information seamlessly and in realtime with their downstream business partners and suppliers. Firms like the start-ups Sourcemap, and LlamaSoft are offering “supply chain visualization” technology that leverages a familiar formula these days: mobility, social networking, crowd-sourced intelligence, and “Big Data” analytics. [There’s more to read about supply chain security on The Security Ledger.] However, as […]
Week In Security: NSA Spies on Yahoo & Google, Adobe Hack and Healthcare.gov
There’s nothing like a Sunday morning for looking back over the week’s events and trying to make sense of at all – or at least what sense there is to be had. This Sunday was no different – especially after a week that saw continued revelations stemming from Edward Snowden’s leak of classified intelligence on NSA spying, the massive hack of software maker Adobe. Then there was the botched rollout of the federal Healthcare.gov marketplace – which morphed into an even bigger, uglier problem as the week progressed. To help me sort it all out, I called on Nick Selby, the CEO of StreetCred Software and an authority on cyber security, law enforcement, government procurement, Russia, Germany, aviation, travel journalism and all manner of other topics. I love talking to Nick because his wealth of life and professional experience make him predictably unpredictable when it comes to interpreting current events. […]
Is A Nest Botnet In Our Future? A Conversation With IoT Researcher Daniel Buentello
Daniel Buentello is one of the top security researchers out there looking into the security of common, consumer products that are part of the growing “Internet of Things.” Most recently, Buentello has been making the rounds of security cons with a presentation he calls “Weaponizing Your Coffee Pot.” The talk, which Bountello presented at the recent DerbyCon hacker conference in Kentucky and at ToorCon in Seattle in July. That talk was something of a call to arms for security folk to start poking around the growing list of IP-enabled consumer products. Buentello notes that most – including products from large firms like Belkin are insecure by design and in deployment. As we noted when we wrote about Buentello presentation early in October, the interesting stuff here is Daniel’s methodology for reverse engineering the software that runs these commercial developments, which offers something of a blueprint for others to follow. More recently, Buentello turned his gaze to […]
Exclusive: Apple Store Favorite IZON Cameras Riddled With Security Holes
It’s another day, another face-palm moment for the home surveillance camera industry. Just one month after the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) settled a complaint with the maker of SecurView, a line of poorly secured home surveillance cameras, a researcher at the firm Duo Security has found a slew of even more serious security holes in the IZON Camera – a popular product that is sold in Apple Stores and Best Buy, among others. A review by The Security Ledger found dozens of such systems accessible via the public Internet, in some cases allowing anyone to peer into the interiors of private residences and businesses. Mark Stanislav, the Security Evangelist at the firm Duo Security, presented the details of a security audit of the IZON camera at a security conference in New York on Tuesday. Stanislav documented troubling security lapses including a wide-open configuration with exposed ports for accessing the device […]
