endpoint security

Everything Tastes Better with Bluetooth: Understanding IoT Risk

In-brief: Marc Blackmer of Cisco says that, with so much promise, it can be hard to anticipate how individual or company-wide decisions to embrace the IoT might bear on cyber risk. 

DEFCON - Modding Stuff

DEFCON To Host IoT Hacking Village

The Internet of Things has arrived – at least insofar as the hacker underground is concerned. The IoT is getting its own Village at DefCon. Sure, it’s been easy enough to see for a while that hacking “stuff” was what all the cool kids were doing, whether you were talking about Barnaby Jack’s “Jackpotting ATMs” presentation or the research on telematics systems by folks like Charlie Miller and Chris Valasek. But the creation of a dedicated “IoT Village” at the show, alongside staples like the Lockpick Village, the Wireless Village and the Packet Hacking Village (aka “The Wall of Sheep”) establishes Internet of Things hacking as a major new “vertical” within the diverse and fast-evolving hacking subculture. [Read more Security Ledger coverage of hacking the Internet of Things.]   Villages are dedicated areas of the DEFCON conference where attendees can converge to view demonstrations and take part in hands on lessons […]

Surgical Robots The Latest To Fall To Whitehats

In-brief: Researchers from the University of Washington demonstrated attacks against “a slew” of exploitable vulnerabilities in a surgical robot they helped develop. They included attacks that could cause “jerky motion of robot’s arms” or render the surgical robot “motionless” and “almost unusable.”

A Good Housekeeping Seal for the Connected Home?

In-brief: Experts on the security of the Internet of Things warned that lax security and privacy protections are rampant in connected home products, but consumers have no way of knowing whether the products they buy are easy targets for hackers. 

Verizon: Internet of Things Hacks Pose Little Risk – For Now

In-brief: Verizon said in its latest Data Breach Investigations Report that threats from Internet of Things technologies were more theory than practice in 2014, but that 2015 could see IoT devices play a role in breaches.