In-brief: German carmaker BMW used a ‘over the air’ wireless patch to close a security flaw that could have allowed hackers to unlock the doors of Rolls-Royce, Mini and BMW vehicles.
Tag: hardware
Ghost Vulnerability Replays Third Party Code Woes
In-brief: The security firm Qualys is warning of a serious and remotely exploitable vulnerability in a function of the GNU C Library (glibc) known as gethostbyname. The security hole raises more questions about dangers lurking in legacy, open source software.
Security and Patching Challenge the Industrial Internet| CIO
The magazine CIO has picked up on a report by the firm National Instruments on some of the key challenges facing the industrial Internet of Things. No surprise: security and management are two of them. National Instruments has an interesting perspective on the topic: it makes equipment that is used by heavy industry (energy, oil and gas, automotive, etc.) to monitor industrial processes. As a result, NI is knee deep in the transformation to “smart” industry powered by autonomous, sensing equipment. The company anticipates big challenges as more and more industrial systems come online. From the article: “As massive networks of systems come online, these systems need to communicate with each other and with the enterprise, often over vast distances…Both the systems and the communications need to be secure, or millions of dollars’ worth of assets are put at risk.” Beyond that, NI notes that companies developing products for the industrial Internet of Things […]
IBM and Samsung bet on Bitcoin Tech to save the Internet of Things
In-brief: IBM and Samsung are collaborating on a platform they say will help billions of connected devices interact securely. The technology, “blockchain,” is borrowed – in part -from the online currency Bitcoin, but has better applications as a transaction processing system.
The Enduring Terribleness of Home Router Security Matters to IoT
Last week, home broadband router maker ASUS was the latest vendor to issue an emergency patch for a critical vulnerability in its products. This, after proof-of-concept exploit code was released for the so-called “Inforsvr” vulnerability that affects several ASUS home routers. That vulnerability -if left unpatched – would allow anyone with access to a home- or small business network that used an ASUS broadband router to, essentially, commandeer the device. The “infosvr” feature is typically used for device discovery by the ASUS Wireless Router Device Discovery Utility, but the service also allowed unauthenticated users to execute commands through it using the “root” permissions, according to researcher Friedrich Postelstorfer, who created a proof of concept exploit for the security hole and released it on January 4. The exploit code finally prompted a patch from ASUS on January 13. The company had spent months analyzing the issue and working on a fix. Patch aside, it has been a worrying month for the […]
