Search Results for "connected home"

Wired Imagines Our Dystopian Connected Home Future

Over at Wired.com, the ever-provocative Matt Honan has a great little thought exercise on the “nightmare” that could come from connected home technology gone wrong. His piece, The Nightmare on Connected Home Street, is a first person narrative of a man who wakes up to discover he’s transformed into a cockroach  inhabiting a virus infected home. “Technically it’s malware. But there’s no patch yet, and pretty much everyone’s got it. Homes up and down the block are lit up, even at this early hour. Thankfully this one is fairly benign. It sets off the alarm with music I blacklisted decades ago on Pandora. It takes a picture of me as I get out of the shower every morning and uploads it to Facebook. No big deal.” The story goes on to chronicle some of the other dystopian features of connected home malware – the hacked “Dropcam Total Home Immersion” account that […]

Update – Virtual Vandalism: Firm Warns Of Connected Home Security Holes

[This story was updated to include response from Belkin describing its response to the vulnerabilities identified by IOActive, including firmware updates. – PFR Feb 19, 2014] A researcher with the respected security firm IOActive says that he has found a number of serious security holes in home automation products from the firm Belkin that could allow remote attackers to use Belkin’s WeMo devices to virtually vandalize connected homes or as a stepping stone to other computers connected on a home network. In a statement released on Tuesday, IOActive researcher Mike Davis said that his research into Belkin’s WeMo technology found the “devices expose users to several potentially costly threats, from home fires with possible tragic consequences down to the simple waste of electricity.” IOActive provided information on Davis’s research to the US Computer Emergency Readiness Team (CERT), which issued an advisory on the WeMo issues on Tuesday.  Belkin did not […]

Episode 244: ZuoRAT brings APT Tactics to Home Networks

In this episode of the Security Ledger podcast, brought to you by ReversingLabs, we interview Danny Adamitis (@dadamitis) of Black Lotus Labs about the discovery of ZuoRAT, malware that targets SOHO routers – and is outfitted with APT-style tools for attacking the devices connected to home networks. As always,  you can check our full conversation in our latest Security Ledger podcast at Blubrry. You can also listen to it on iTunes and Spotify. Or, check us out on Google Podcasts, Stitcher, Radio Public and more. Also: if you enjoy this podcast, consider signing up to receive it in your email. Just point your web browser to securityledger.com/subscribe to get notified whenever a new podcast is posted.  [MP3] Cyber attacks on small office and home office (or SOHO) routers aren’t new. Back in 2016, the malware known as Mirai made headlines across the world by infecting hundreds of thousands of weekly protected SOHO routers and DVR devices and stringing them into […]

Episode 186: Certifying Your Smart Home Security with GE Appliances and UL

In this episode of the podcast (#186) we do a deep dive on the new IoT cyber security rating system from Underwriters’ Lab. We talk with experts from GE about the process they used to obtain UL certification for a range of smart home appliances, managing device security over the decades and how a cyber security rating system may influence consumers’ behavior.

Critical Flaws in VxWorks affect 200 Million Connected Things

Serious and exploitable security flaws in VxWorks, a commonly used operating system for embedded devices, span 13 years and could leave hundreds of millions* of connected devices vulnerable to remote cyber attacks and hacks. The security firm Armis on Monday published a warning about 11 critical, zero day vulnerabilities in the VxWorks operating system, which is owned and managed by the firm Wind River. The vulnerabilities expose more than 200 million devices and could allow attackers to remotely take control of everything from networked printers and security appliances to industrial and medical devices, according to Ben Seri, the Vice President of Research at Armis. Move over, EternalBlue! At least a couple of the flaws were described as “more serious” than EternalBlue, the Microsoft Windows flaw that powered both the WannaCry and NotPetya malware outbreaks. SCADA and industrial control system devices, healthcare devices like patient monitors and MRI machines, as well […]