For an Internet of Things, We Are Going to Need Better Things

There's a lot of hype around at the moment about "The Internet of Things" (IoT), which, I suppose, is all about attaching, uh, things to the Internet. By "things", it seems we are supposed to be thinking household goods, vehicles; basically anything with electrical current running through it is a candidate for the "internet of things".

While setting up a cheapo DVD player last week, I couldn't help thinking of Chief Brody in the film "Jaws"... "You're going to need a bigger boat", he says, on seeing the enormous shark. We're going to need a bigger mindset on security if we are to survive the onslaught of "things". The firmware in the kind of devices we are already routinely connecting up is drivel. I mean some of it is absolute garbage. I know there are exceptions, but most of it is badly built, and almost none of it is ever updated.

Each of these devices is likely perfectly capable as a host in a botnet - for DDoS, for sending SPAM, SPIM and SPIT (OK, we are yet to see much in the way of unsolicited Internet Telephony... but with the IoT, devices built to make calls/send texts are likely to get hijacked), so each of these devices has a value to the Internet's vast supply of wrongdoers.

Researchers at Eurcom recently completed a study showing up vulnerabilities in the 30 thousand or so firmware images they scraped from vendor websites. Apparently one image even contained a linux kernel whose age had just hit double figures. Ouch. The "Nest" next-gen thermostat hasn't been without issues either, a high profile target, at least we can expect firmware updates from them!

Synology's NAS storage devices are among the early victims of malware attacking non-traditional computing devices, and may be an indication of IoT issues to come. Users of these storage devices have found themselves victim of a crypto-ransomware attack: their files are encrypted, and the encryption keys offered for sale back to them! Other early warnings come in the form of attacks on SCADA industrial control systems. These are all places that traditionally, little or no emphasis has been placed on security.

What can we do to help ourselves here? My advice is be careful before you buy anything you're going to add to your network. Look to see if the vendor has a firmware download, and if there's a recent-ish update. If they're the fire'n'forget types, you're probably not going to want to deploy it.

Footnote: Gartner appears to believe the Internet of Things to have reached "peak hype". Reminds me of an old saying about those dwelling in vitreous abodes launching masonry...