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Podcast: Securing The Internet of Things

September 20, 2013 Paul Roberts

One of the most vexing problems created by the fast-evolving Internet of Things is how to secure the massive trove of data that is transmitted and then stored by smart devices such as automobiles, consumer and household electronics and personal devices. As we’ve seen, private sector firms have been aggressive in leveraging new technology to connect their products to the Internet. But less thought has been given to the security and privacy implications of doing so. Now people are starting to take notice. In recent weeks, the FTC settled a case with a California firm, TRENDNet over balky home surveillance cameras they sold – cameras that were discovered to be easily discoverable and hackable from the public Internet. But, with so many cooks in the IoT kitchen (so to speak), where does responsibility for securing technology lie? Recently, I chatted with an expert on security and the Internet of Things. […]

Why The Mailpile Misstep Is No Joke To PayPal

September 7, 2013 Paul Roberts

PayPal and Mailpile, the scrappy secure mail startup ended the week on a high note: hugging it out (via Twitter) after the online payments behemoth froze more than $40,000 in payments to the crowd-funded startup then donated $1,000 to the project, to boot. But making it right with the tiny secure email firm is just the beginning of the story at PayPal, which is making the whole mix-up as something of an object lesson in how it needs to change to address a fluid and fast-moving online payments market. First, some background: Mailpile, of Reykjavík, Iceland, has raised more than $145,000 in a month-long campaign on the crowd funding web site Indiegogo.com to build a “fast, web-mail client with user-friendly encryption and privacy features.” Beginning on Saturday, PayPal froze more than $40,000 of those donations, suspecting fraud. The company’s spokespeople told company executive Brennan Novak that it wanted to see […]

With Settlement, FTC Issues Warning On IP-Enabled Cameras

September 4, 2013 Paul Roberts

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 […]

What Is The NSA’s Big Crypto Breakthrough?

August 30, 2013 Paul Roberts

The revelations about US government spying keep coming fast and furious, thanks to Edward Snowden, the former Booz Allen Hamilton contractor who absconded with reams of classified (and highly classified) documents from the National Security Agency. The latest details come courtesy of The Washington Post which on Thursday published documents detailing the so-called “Black Budget” – government spending on its intelligence services including the CIA and NSA – over the last nine years, including the $52 billion spent in 2013. The documents give the most detailed accounting to date on U.S. government spending on intelligence in the post September 11 world and contain quite a few surprises. Among them: proof that the CIA receives far more money than does the NSA. But it is Uncle Sam’s work on cryptanalysis that has attracted a lot of attention from computer security and privacy experts. First, the Black Budget reveals that the NSA […]

Is Jump In ToR Use Blowback From PRISM?

August 29, 2013 Paul Roberts

It’s ironic that government surveillance might push the public to embrace technology pioneered by the Department of Defense. But so it is: new metrics from The Tor Project show that use of the online anonymity service has exploded since early June: up more than 100 percent, from just over 500,000 global users to more than 1.2 million. Why the sudden surge in privacy conscious Internet users? It would be easy to connect the dots between revelations about the U.S. government’s omnibus data gathering program PRISM and the sudden desire of Internet users to sacrifice some speed and performance for the privilege of having their online doings passed through The Onion Router. Still, it’s not clear that this is the case. To be sure: growth is being seen across the board, not just in active users, but in the number of ToR clients running, the data suggests. There are steep increases […]