The fresh smell of ransomed coffee
decoded.avast.io
decoded.avast.io
It's just another PoC showing that IoT devices tend to have bad security.
In-the-wild ransomware would be interesting news because the same fragmentation that makes it unprofitable to secure devices (too few devices sold of each vendor/model for the vendor to invest serious money in security) makes it unprofitable to attack most devices.
Ransomware is particularly pointless for non-critical devices like a coffee maker. I could see it working e.g. with something controlling heating that isn't easily bypassable (pay us now, or by the time you get a tech out your pipes will be frozen and your house ruined), or something that can otherwise cause harm before the user can disable it (which is likely rare).
With a coffee maker, you can easily unplug the device (preventing it from doing further harm/threatening to burn your house down), put it in a box, and ship it to the vendor to fix it.
The average person does not.
The coffee maker can be programmed to tell the user they have to pay or XYZ will happen.
Some will believe them and pay.
What would you make "XYZ" to convince a reasonable number of users to pay you, instead of unplugging the machine and optionally removing it from their house through the nearest window?
And showing the face of the devil and saying "Gimme money" is an obvious PoC. In 5 years the error message will be "Problem 0xDF. Please contact support at [scammer's number]". And then? Sending a fake repairman with a hefty bill would take too much time, how about a remote "repair" and a repair bill?
"We can send someone out to repair it, but that'll 2 weeks. Or we can do it over the Internet in 5 minutes, but it will cost $10, which would you prefer?".
Balance that with the cost of developing the attack, the software, the phone scripts, the infrastructure for handling the calls and money collection, ...
Also, how would the attacker collect payment? Bitcoin/gift cards break the conversion rate, and credit card will get killed by chargebacks once the attack becomes well known.
They also often don't cause problems for the user, so the user - and as a result, the vendor - doesn't have a strong incentive to avoid them.
This sounds like good coffee.
It’s a pity they went with the ‘q’ imho.
Edit: perhaps a better solution is to change to the original source, pointed out by commenters in this thread. We've changed to that from https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2020/09/how-a....
This really has nothing to do with demanding ransom. You could hack a website leaving a message and claim they could "Demand a ransom".
Quite simply this is just the ease of hacking IoT devices which unfortunately is not new and has happened with every industry as it becomes "connected" (cars, homes, etc).
I would have clicked if it said merely "IoT /s/Home Devices /Coffee Makers/ easily hacked" but the "ransom" aspect is purely to heighten the fear, arguably even in the article itself.
This reminds me of the range-rover when they reported on it as if they had taken over a jeep "in-the-wild" where in reality it was a very controlled scenario and arguably much more sophisticated. Even then it wasn't as sensational as this (just my opinion).
And thus we are here. When the evangelists don’t care about security, the industry won’t care about security. Well, maybe it’s the other way around. In either case, nobody in the industry cares about security.
Worrying about things like security would adversely impact your time-to-market.
Security isn't a feature---it has to be baked in from the ground floor and isn't apparent to the end user except as a annoyance.
Security is a difficult problem that requires at least some minimum of knowledge and experience---knowledge and experience that are unrelated to the device or the development of its new features.
There is no financial or professional upside to paying for security, and no financial downside to not doing so.
Security is always regarded as a magic-bullet topic; there must be some magic pixie dust to sprinkle on the device to make security problems disappear. Like firewalls, VPNs, and encryption.
Security problems have two advantages. First, they are rather rare and something that happens to other people. Second, they are easy to push off onto the end user: "Well, har, har, you wouldn't have this problem if you had just..."
The devices themselves are regarded in black-or-white terms: either a coffeemaker with multiple processors is the best thing since Attila the Hun invented the pillage, or the whole idea is more idiotic than selling a fish a bicycle. No one is interested in a middleground, cost-benefit analysis.
Yes, many of these put the responsibility for the (lack of) security of devices on the engineers and developers. That's why we get paid the big bucks.
There are things where IoT was added to make them appear more modern, and things where it actually makes sense.
For the microwave, for example, I'd argue IoT would still be the wrong choice, because figuring out the magic buttons for setting the time twice a year is less work than dealing with the overhead of IoT (updating their app, managing the account when it breaks, etc.).
The tactile and audio feedback, coupled with low modality and high reliability, means you can operate it without looking. On the microwaves I owned, I'd start keying in times with one hand while the other hand was still putting the food in, and closing the lid doors would coincide with me pressing <Start>.
That's not an experience you can replicate with an app. Phones themselves aren't ergonomic enough, and even if they were, app creators generally don't know how to design ergonomic user interfaces.
The microwave clock was the centerpiece of my childhood home. I legitimately don't think we had another way of telling time in the common areas.
But the problem I now see is that a kitchen today can have half a dozen clocks in it now, because a lot of appliances ship with one.
Also, touchscreens assume reasonably clean, dry and ungloved hands. This mixes poorly with kitchens.
Not really related to the topic but there are microwaves out there with a well implemented dial control, e.g. some Panasonic models. Worth every penny for a device I use so frequently.
This thing vs a $10 French Press in particular, but even internet connected crock pots and things. Monitoring my cooking food from across town doesn't solve any problem - if something goes wrong, there's nothing I can do about it and I've just added stress to my life that wasn't there previously.
1. A weird part of the exterior. I don't physically walk back there often, so the camera is handy.
2. One at the mailbox/package drop spot. Not for theft, just to know when my packages arrive.
3. One in the "mechanical" room so I can check in while I'm away (we have hydronic heat, so we can't fully turn the water off in the winter).
The dream is for everything to be interconnected. Of course, that's also the nightmare
Great for you, I guess. I wasn't really suggesting it was.
I was stating the ideal universe that these IoT devices want to exist in, in which their goals & operations start to make more sense.
Maybe once IoT is sufficiently advanced, with robots and stuff, it turns into the "household servants for the Every Man" noted above.
And I'm not anti-tech. I have some IoT stuff (cameras) that serve no real purpose other than "look, I have cameras!"
But to be clear, I'm not advocating anything -- I'm just describing why IoT is a thing, and people get excited for. I don't actually believe this universe will really exist anytime soon, as it requires "sufficiently intelligent" technology and communication, which really almost starts to approach knowing how to cook your food for you to accomplish anything non-trivial
But the belief is what drives this tech.
In that world, the use case isn't cooking food from across town. It's cooking food from another room.
I'm sitting in my home office right now. I'm working (well, on a HN break :)). My wife is playing with our child. I'm thirsty and I want a cup of tea now. My choices are either to distract myself for a couple minutes, which is annoying if the thirst hits in when I'm "in the zone". Or I could ask my wife, but she has better things to do and I don't like interrupting people unless it's necessary. In this perfect world I described at the beginning, I could just press a button on my keyboard to start the kettle, and would get a pop-up notification once the water is ready. I'd just get up and get my tea without losing focus, and without distracting anyone else.
Similar reasoning for other appliances.
Unfortunately, the way IoT is developing, I don't expect that future any time soon, because some of the features are in opposition to the business model under which IoT companies operate. A better bet for me would be to get an EE degree and mod the appliances myself (I'm not doing it now, because I'm afraid of letting my contraptions control anything that's connected to mains, or could otherwise start a fire).
EDIT:
Another way of putting the value proposition of IoT in a sane world: rich people hire assistants to handle trivial and distracting errands. IoT is supposed to be an equivalent of that, but available to everyone.
Additionally, I was finding most of these devices were actually increasing the time it took to do something rather than enabling some impossible interaction.
I’m short on IoT except for industrial usage, where you are displacing an inspector or a manual data collection. That said those spaces are just as bad as the home devices.
Presumably they're similar to smart TVs: some consumers may want them, but nearly all OEMs would rather sell a smart one than a dumb one
A lot of powered appliances either heat something up or spin a fan or pump. They don't need information from the internet and any slight advantage is outweighed by their complexity and cost.
I think you are right that manufacturers want to break free from being commodities. I think it is only a matter of time before people realize that they aren't gaining anything from complicating things that used to be simple.
But a coffee machine, toaster or whatever... just... why?!
Even as a life-long techie, and putting aside privacy concerns, there isn't a single compelling reason to want my coffee machine to be connected to the Internet, or even my local network.
> "Smart TVs are different..."
and
> " think it is only a matter of time before people realize that they aren't gaining anything from complicating things that used to be simple."
you're making the same mistake of overgeneralizing, assuming that every (other) smart appliance can't have usefulness outside of its core, dumb functionality, based on one example of that being true.
hopefully we can agree that some smartened appliances benefit the consumer, though not all (as in the case of a coffee maker), even if manufacturers are incentivized to break out of the commodity box by smartifying all the things, consequences and functionality be damned.
I'm not assuming that at all and it has nothing to do with smart TVs. Smart TVs are a place where having a computer inside is something people want.
I'm saying other appliances are different, not because there can't be a benefit, but because the benefits are much smaller and complexity to usefulness ratio is much smaller. Also operating most appliances remotely or with a more elaborate interface doesn't give much benefit. Thermostats might be somewhere in the middle since there is a lot of room for improvement, not just in setting up a schedule or setting them remotely, but in the information they give back to you (how many btus are you leaking out of your house over time, etc.)
So much potential to become a real trojan
Yes. The reality is they while this is a cool experimental hack, no one in reality is going to bother hacking other people's coffee makers.
A Ransomware-bridge between networks: https://www.hackread.com/how-a-coffee-machine-infected-facto...
Well, that's a bit of a strawman, isn't it, given it would typically boil down to "vanilla/not vanilla" for most chardonnays?
Biased sample. There are many confounding factors why if you cannot tell the difference, it is likely your family can’t either.
I do like the idea of testing my wine drinking friends, who are definitely not snobs. I would bet money they would mostly pick the difference between a normal: Oaked Chardonnay, Reisling, Savignon Blanc, and Cabernet Savignon. I suspect the red wine drinkers could tell some of the red wine varietals too (I would struggle there).
I don't believe I have an impaired sense of taste. I'm just highly skeptical of the objectivity of my sense of taste. Marketting and branding probably has more influence than anything else when comparing two drinks in the same category (wine-to-wine, coffee-to-coffee, etc.)
Instant coffee is not even in the same category as brewed coffee. I am by no means a coffee snob. I do grind beans right before I brew, but they are the lowest priced beans I can find that taste good to me (which is reasonably cheap).
I'd love to just microwave a cup, but that stuff tastes nasty.
I think you are concluding too much for the data points you have (of your personal experience).
I have a similar palate (lack thereof) like yours, but even my family members can tell when I've (say) used "too much" garlic in a recipe--when I can't even tell that the garlic is even there in the final product. (I only use it because the recipe says to.) Using a (e.g.) different marinade for chicken does not change my perception of it much when I chow down, but it does for others eating it.
I once heard the explanation that the 'flavour' of a food is made of the taste (tongue), aroma (smell), and even texture of a food. Adam Ragusa made a video on the smell part recently:
* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_O-E-7MMNyE
I suspect that I (and you given your descriptions) may have some kind of lowered sense of smell when comes to intaking foods and beverages, and so do not perceive the "tastes" as much as some other people. For example I cannot tell the difference in a lager, stout, etc, types of beer (they're all 'yeast water' to me), but I know people who love beer so much that if you put down a random one in from of them they could ID the style and often the maker and make.
The flavours that do not exist in your experience may in fact do so for folks who have senses that are more sensitive than yours. Epicurious has a series of videos where experts do a blind taste test on "Cheap vs Expensive" products:
* https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLz3-p2q6vFYUpr-f2wOSQ...
There certainly are folks that pre-judge things by simply knowing which is which beforehand, but to say that 'there are no differences' is swinging the pendulum the other way too much as well IMHO.
Find a few coffee gear testing reviews where they use the same beans, using the same grinder, and yet different brewers cause slightly different results as perceive by the testers.
America's Test Kitchen is a good source, as they often have a dozen-plus folks do blind tests to find the most-liked ("best") product.
And I'm definitely not a coffee snob. But I can tell you that bog standard Tesco "house blend" coffee tastes nicer in a Philips Solimo machine than in an Aeropress, and nicer in the Aeropress than in a cafetière. And Amazon branded Solimo sachets aren't quite as nice as the ground coffee in the machine, but are good enough for every-day use.
Coffee.. geeze, much more so. If the only thing available is a jug of brewed coffeewater that you pump out nice and bubbly, as at hotel breakfast bars or conference centres, I have to really 'need' it, and then I pack it with sugar to take the taste away. (I don't ordinarily drink coffee with sugar at all.) Instant, I just can't drink. I could definitely tell you the difference between instant 'coffee' and real, it's not a case of having a preference and better 'notes' like 'essence of snobby bullshit' - one I would be able to drink, and the other I would want to spit out before it even hit my lips.
For many people, the cost (both labor and monetary) of "good" coffee doesn't come with a corresponding increase in their enjoyment. You won't change their mind.
Although, personally, I'd question anyone buying these, much less taking out their phone while they're driving to tell a "smart" coffee maker to brew a cup.
Surely a kettle (ahem) boils down to a simple resistor (the heating element) that gets good and hot, boiling the water. P=VI, so if you halve the voltage (wrt the UK) you need to sink twice the current. I=V/R, so if you need to double the current (and voltage is fixed) you need to halve the resistance.
Is the problem that they're rare enough that they're all import kettles safe at 110 but designed for higher voltages?
AmazonBasics kettle (first result for searching kettle) for example is rated 1.5kW.
I'm just sceptical that all American kettles can suck, and mains voltage be the cause. If that were the only reason, and otherwise you'd all love them, you'd have a 'kettle socket' on higher amperage, as for ovens (here too, 32A).
One "cool" point with your friends.
"Check this out dudes! Alexa! Brew coffee"
And when Alexa responds with, "Please add water", you lose two cool points and end up in a deficit.
If you need to remote start your coffee pot, you need to get your life a little more together. If you need remote notifications that coffee is done, the same applies. It's not hard to plan around "Coffee takes about 15 minutes to brew, so I start it before I hop in the shower".
Same applies to other household appliances: the dishwasher, the oven, the washing machine. All I want is to have a set of icons in my computer's tray that change color when a given device is done. This would let me stop scheduling life around the machines, or having to keep the doors to the home office open and headphones off to hear the various beeps. Instead, I could set them to do the work, and go back to doing my stuff fully focused.
In a sane world where tech companies practice anything resembling solid engineering, this would not require the devices to have an Internet connection. Working over LAN with standardized (and already existing) protocols is all that's required. In this world, I don't have any of the conveniences described above, because I'm not crazy or gullible enough to buy an IoT appliance.
If it takes 3 minutes, press start, look at the clock, come back in 3 (or ~1 song later, if that's easier).
I don't mean to be rude, but if a task this simple is difficult for you to manage on your own, you might benefit from a little more organizing and self-discipline in your life.
To each their own (I don't know your life), but in my world, attempting to be "fully focused" every second of the day is a perfect recipe for burnout. Coffee, for me, is about not being fully focused. Like an intentional break from it (i.e, a "coffee break"). Taking the time to prep it, brew it, and drink it, is all a part of the process.
It's a fun experiment to try and optimize every minute of the day around productivity, but its untenable, long-term.
Sure. And that's how I cope with life, really. My watch has a bunch of timers pre-configured on it - a Pomodoro timer, a "pizza in oven" timer, a "baguettes in oven" timer, an "instant noodles" timer, etc. But the list of timers keeps growing, and it's mildly annoying that I have to do it in the first place. So my argument here can be somewhat simplified to: in a world with working IoT, I wouldn't have to manage those timers.
> if a task this simple is difficult for you to manage on your own
I never said I can't manage it. I only said it's annoying to have to be waiting on the kettle. One more thing to juggle in your head.
> To each their own (I don't know your life), but in my world, attempting to be "fully focused" every second of the day is a perfect recipe for burnout.
I don't mean to be rude, but yeah, you don't know my life :).
I'm not trying to optimize my entire day to the minute (I actually did try that, I couldn't handle it - I'm not wired for rigid, inflexible schedules without space for randomness). But due to nature and nurture, I require a constant influx of fresh tea (I average roughly a cup an hour). I drink tea while doing the stuff I'm doing. So during the course of the day, it does intersect the times where I want to be focused - whether on work, on a side project, or on my family.
My philosophy of life is one of eliminating upkeep and maintenance work - things that distract me from what I want to be doing. So e.g. I use a dishwasher to spend less time cleaning up after cooking (and save some water too). "Eating good food" is the only goal I care about here - the cooking and the cleaning afterwards are both means to an end, and the less effort they take, the better. Under the same philosophy, I'd prefer if my kettle could be filled and triggered remotely, and flashed an icon on my desktop (or better, vibed my watch) when it's done.
And to be absolutely clear: we're talking ultimate "first world problem" level here. I'm not suffering because I have a manually operated kettle.
If I could schedule the dishwasher to start automatically at 10 am every weekday, that would be fantastic! If it could remind me to load detergent the night before, that would be even better. And if the dishwasher had a reservoir of detergent that I only had to refill once a month... I’m not saying these little enhancements would be life-changing or anything, and if they cost hundreds of dollars extra, I would certainly pass. But it would be nice.
——
1: (Now I work from home, so there’s no way to avoid hearing the dishwasher.)
“Siri, 5 minute timer”. Cross-platform solution.
No matter what I need a notification about, it’s the same action every time if I’m boiling noodles or filling the bathtub or preheating the barbecue. No configuration necessary. I appreciate that level of simplicity.
FWIW, I have my Pebble workflow simplified to "long hold down button" as a shortcut to timer list, then scroll to the right timer, "long hold middle button" to start it. It takes about as much time as it takes me to fetch my phone from my pocket. Also, since I do Pomodoros during work day (to keep myself focused), the timer list is usually always open on my watch, so the flow reduces to just scrolling through the list and activating the right timer - i.e. roughly 2 seconds. And, after activating the timer, I don't have a phone to stow back into my pocket :).
(Also, since the timer is active and visible on my watch, I can give an immediate answer whenever my wife asks me how much longer is the cooking going to take :). That one was a side benefit I didn't initially expect.)
> No configuration necessary. I appreciate that level of simplicity.
Yeah, that's good. In my case, I achieve almost the equivalent through pre-configuration: over time I've accrued a bunch of pre-set timers that cover 95% of my day-to-day needs. I rarely need to create a new one.
Anyway, that's what works for me now. I'm not saying this is optimal for everyone.
I used to be here, had goals of "Tony Stark-ing" as much of my home automation as Ic could and managed to succeed in a lot of ways.
What's weird is where I used to be 50/50 WFH thanks to successfully negotiating it in my hiring, going 100% WFH has made me really appreciate having analog "chores" to do that have nothing to do with the world of digital technology that consumes 8-10 hours of the day. In fact I've started looking forward to them.
The side effects have been interesting, the chores went from "I gotta clear out the dishwasher otherwise I'll have nothing to cook with, I wish I could automate this" to "I'm gonna tidy up and put on some Chuck Mingus because it's a nice break from Zoom calls" and has introduced a lot of deliberate-ness to my world that didn't exist before. And I like it.
Anybody else reach this inflection point in their day to day yet having gone full-remote?
For me, the perfect break from 8 hours of work isn't analog chores. It's playing a videogame. Or working on a side project. Or reading a book. I don't know why is that, perhaps because I just don't tire in front of computers: I can stare at a screen for 16+ hours and my eyes don't even get dry (I contrast that to some of my co-workers from previous jobs, who'd have to take breaks to put saline drops in their eyes near the end of the work day).
This of course puts me in a risk group - I have to actively manage myself to not become a couch potato. I've been working from home for more than 3 years now, so I know I can easily do the "work -> videogame -> sleep -> repeat" routine without ever getting away from a computer for more than 15 minutes. Being married definitely helps with ensuring I don't spend the whole day in front of the screen.
But the bottom line is: even after an exhausting day, I don't find rest in physical chores. Never had. So I welcome every opportunity to get rid of them, as I always feel I have more interesting stuff to do.
I love manual chores. During RSI breaks, (previously pomodoro breaks), five minutes cleaning out the washer, hanging up laundry, weeding a patch of vegetables, pruning a shrub, chopping wood, collecting fruit, feeding chickens or just petting my cats.
E.g. plucking weed in my garden gives me headspace to 'zoom out'. To see bigger pictures. Evaluate if 'm ye entire morning updating the linter' benefits the company at all (no). Or if performance really is an issue for customers in that area. Or if this idea for presentation-models really helps with velocity.
You set the temp. on the app, and how long to keep warm once it reaches that temp, and it sends push notifications for when it is ready and also done warming.
I have not decompiled the app, nor attempted to MitM it yet.
It’s a deep hole when you fall it, but you can have what you want.
ESP8266 and ESP32 chips can be made to to do all sorts of magic and are very inexpensive and easily flashed.
There are a variety of option for programming them from flashing with mostly-premade software (ESPHome) or do it yourself with Arduino. Mine all tie into Home Assistant.
There are a range of sensors that do all sorts of things.
Mine post to a Slack channel for stuff I want to know about.
The time invested is vastly more than the time saved, but I love it.
(One of these days I'll figure out how to properly design battery-powered devices, and build some sensors that aren't hooked to wall warts.)
There is a flame sensor available for Arduino.
Bad jokes aside, it is annoying having wall warts and batteries aren’t a perfect solution either.
I’ve only wired one relay but it does give me pause.
I also think it’s not tech companies making these devices, they are low margin commodities. And since you’re competing adding a luxury like a notification on your phone, versus 4 minutes of your time. It hard to justify the larger margin.
Agree with that. Especially if a hard problem stumps me, it's very refreshing to actually focus on making coffee for a few minutes. It clears the head to so something simple and different for a few minutes.
The rest of the day, I want that routine. It's an excuse to go downstairs and play with my kid for five minutes.
The fact that most IoT is shit doesn’t make IoT a stupid concept.
Rather you sent a command in hopes that it would turn off, and hopefully it reports back correctly.
An IoT oven sounds like the worst possible home attack surface. Especially if it's a gas appliance.
Making good coffee isn't expensive and it isn't rocket science. It doesn't even have to be that fresh to still be good. But there are two corners you absolutely can't cut: if you skimp on the quantity of coffee, you waste all you've used; if you skimp on time, you waste all you've spent.
Though I've been drinking black coffee since my teens and never found it bitter when made right. The cream-and-sugar majority might disagree.
Wow, it needs two 32bit CPUs to make my coffee.
They sell you 32 bit CPUs to make your coffee. It's more profitable that way. You don't need any IoT nonsense to make coffee.
They don't need those chips to make your coffee, they need them to connect to the internet and to avoid hiring expensive experts. 5 years from now this might use a single ESP32-S2, but it doesn't seem outrageous, especially when the machine also has a display.
Plus, as a bonus, you can use it to mine Monero! Small correction to the article, STM32F0s have a PLL so they aren't limited to the crystal's 8MHz frequency. They're rated for 48MHz, but you can also overclock them.
Processing UART traffic is more resource-intensive.
In many cases, more so. Economies of scale are such that there are many 32-bit MCUs that are cheaper than 8-bit ones with fewer resources.
we have coffee makers more powerful than the first computer's I used in school!
A standard, more powerful part is usually much cheaper than having to do more customization, and these CPUs are so cheap that making it cheaper simply doesn't matter anymore.
For projects made in small quantities, as soon as you need a touch display, throwing an Android phone at the problem is often the right solution, even if you just need something extremely trivial. Sure, I could do it with an 8-bit microcontroller and physical buttons, but by the time I've designed a custom board for it, the time I spent was worth more than the phone.
I don't worry that much about the food I way because my tax dollars are spent to ensure that it meets a quality bar..
Relying on the market to do that would put really high cost or high risk on each individual consumer. Imo it's much better to just be able to trust that everything you can buy meets a bare minimum, unless specifically unregulated.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_re_Sears_Holdings_Managemen....
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_re_Gateway_Learning_Corp.
Even my $15 el-cheapo coffee maker has two thermal cutoff switches.
https://www.electrical-forensics.com/Coffeemakers/CoffeeMake...
I'd much rather have the poltergeist coffeemaker than be back in the 80s when there were 10 identical buttons and no display to schedule my VCR to record a show
- hw engineers that don't know much (almost nothing I'd say) about internet security. Or all the gotchas of sw developments
- "nodejs/docker/systemd" mentality who thinks of uptimes (what's uptime?) in terms of hours instead of years and "just reboot" as a solution to any problem
- "Monetize all the data", hey your coffee maker has a gdpr popup with only an OK button, that's fine and dandy right?
Every device should be factory resettable with a button. Allow upgrades? Sure, but the upgrade runs after the base code ran. It does not override a fixed partition.
Everything that doesn't need to be plugged in shouldn't, and conveniences quickly turn into inconveniences if they can't be maintained long-term.
I think the reference was to the payload, which was targeted at the Siemens S7-315-2 programmable logic controller in order to destabilize high frequency drives and thus ruin the centrifuges attached to them.
Product progressions in my lifetime:
1. Put a clock in it
2. Put a radio in it
3. Put a camera in it
4. Hook everything up to the internetPossibly one of the most ridiculous teardowns I’ve ever seen
1. "...while someone else takes care of the security." That doesn't actually seem likely.
2. Congratulations! You have now invested $N in development costs and glued your business to the side of Amazon's Alexa Division's business decisions.
It's a shame that isn't true, however. Expecting a magical toolkit to ensure security, just means the application will have vulnerabilities.
Yes, you can still screw it up, but Amazon takes care of most of the hard bits that people get wrong.
However, we live in a world where anyone throwing rocks through the car's windows or vandalising the car can be caught to then be given a criminal record, possibly involving time in jail.
We need a culture of prosecuting people who vandalise computer systems and a police force able to take these things seriously, working internationally as required. As it is we do victim blaming and cover ups instead. If a server or an IOT gadget gets hacked we restore from backups (and don't tell the client) rather than go after the evil wrong doer.
I would prefer to see our efforts go into not just better security (encryption everywhere and best practices) but also into the law and order aspect. In that way we can foster a better environment for citizens and business. Any country that gets this together and goes after hackers will have an advantage when it comes to attracting companies that want to have their web services (and coffee machines) secure.
Then, “yes”
Original link from the article, perhaps a better source?