SMART HOMES, SMART SPEAKERS AND SMART PEOPLE

Smart devices have become the norm, for those who can afford to purchase them, smart speakers and home automation devices can, in fact, reall be very helpful. Smart speaking devices can often take input from the user and act on this input across home-wide wireless networking. They can invoke other devices to perform their daily tasks as requested by the user. They can turn on the lights, take inventory of what’s in the fridge, run the microwave, dishwasher, etc. But where does a smart home become smarter than the people living inside of it? Where does a smart device become smarter than the creator?

FIRMWARE TRASHES SMART LOCKS

According to a post on dslreports, originally quoting an article on The Register, back in August, over-the-air upgrades in firmware which got the locks via its link to the user’s router, delivered a botched firmware update which left the locks potentially useless for the next week. No getting in or out through the front door at least. The working part of the lock, the keypad, which allowed users and their guests to enter the premises via their own personal passcodes, was left nonresponsive as the firmware locked many working people out of their homes.

SMART THERMOSTATS TOTALED BY BUGS

Another horror story under Google’s belt, according to a New York Times article from Jan 2016, a smart themometer acquired by Google only two years before was taken offline by a buggy software update that left the users in the cold that winter. The bug supposedly drained the battery and shut the whole thermostat down in the middle of the night. The Vice-President of the company behind the faulty devices said that it was a bug introduced back in a December update and that it had not shown up for two weeks. He also gave users instructions for a nine-step process with which they could regain usability in their frozen thermostats again. But as stated later by the New York Time’s post, this was indeed a glitch that we allow into our lives by inviting newer smart devices into our homes without fully knowing what to expect and by human thinking that “It’ll never happen to me.” We as people often get something new and don’t read documentation, we don’t use proper judgement with a lot of our gadgets, so this holiday season, try taking heed to things from the past and be cautious of what you buy. Be safe this season and bundle up. Don’t rely on technology to be completely faultless. Be smart.

MIRAI MALWARE/BOTNET

All that aside, security researchers have all had a busy year this year. From Microsoft neglecting certain patches until it “wants to send them out” to several root kits and botnets. Mirai for instance, Mirai was in the news countless times for its use “zombifying” countless IOT devices in smart homes. A few of its original creators were thought to have been imprisoned but It’s still an ever waging war with the wave of hackers using it even now. The malware is still alive and well, it was just recently reported on thehackernews.com again the 13^th of December 2017, apparently a few more people have been arrested for the continued distribution of the malware who had a part to play in the massive DDOS use of this malware last year which took down large amounts of websites across the US. Mirai is deployed on IOT(Internet of things) devices and once there, it scans the devices for the default password, if a device is using the default which was likely the case, the malware then adds these devices to a botnet network, a network of zombie devices which then are given the command to send out a continuous stream of tcp flood packets to unwitting servers across the US. Thus rendering the pages those servers maintain to be inaccessible or increasingly sluggish.

TIPS TO STAY SAFE THIS SEASON

1. When shopping for new devices, take the extra time to read the documentation, and also change the default passwords and credentials. Passwords should normally consist of Uppercase, lowercase, num3r1c characters and special characters $@!. Also it is prefered to use non-dictionary words. Also, try to purchase something that works independendant of cloud services.
2. When connecting these devices to the router, perhaps it is best to change the router’s default password and the wireless passphrase as well while in the router’s configuration page.
3. Don’t let the devices stay freely connected to the internet all day, while you will eventually have to update the firmware, doing it manually is better than letting the device do it itself, just be sure to manually update the device within a few days after a firmware update is released. Also, might be wise to turn on the traffic monitor in your router to guage network traffic.
4. Most routers have firmware updates and while I said that firmware updates were sometimes best delayed, you will want to get these updates. Router firmware updates offer security enhancements and close holes that were wide open in your network router before.
5. Finally, keep phone numbers and forum credentials in a database as well as a hard copy, I know in our technological world, it’s nice to be able to save passwords to the cloud, but this won’t help you if your device starts to act insane and you can’t get to the forums on your own computer and thus have to drive to gma’s house to get ahold of the manufacturers.

SOME INTRIGUING READS:

https://krebsonsecurity.com/tag/mirai-botnet/

https://thehackernews.com/2017/12/hacker-ddos-mirai-botnet.html