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Comment by URSpider94 | Hacker News Reader

Amazon released its Alexa Connect Kit to solve this problem: it’s an end to end IoT integration in a module. It’s a good way to focus on building an IoT device while someone else takes care of the security. https://developer.amazon.com/en-US/alexa/connected-devices/a...

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Two issues:

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.

Yup, all your usage data goes through Alexa and Amazon keeps an eye out to decide when it would be worthwhile to make a first-party Alexa coffee maker and eat your entire business

I'm skeptical that Amazon did this out of a genuine concern of IoT security. Seems more likely they wanted to be firmly at the center of all the data acquisition, and while they're no doubt more secure than the average IoT maker they can never be as secure as the act of not collecting the information in the first place. Their new interior security drones are next-level distopian. How long till we're avoiding the Half Life 2 drones inside our own homes?

while someone else takes care of the security

It's a shame that isn't true, however. Expecting a magical toolkit to ensure security, just means the application will have vulnerabilities.

It’s not just a toolkit. If you use Amazon’s hardware module, then they manage all of the security of the on-device code as well as the cloud connection, plus traditional vulnerabilities like setup (as demonstrated in TFA). If there are vulnerabilities, then Amazon can patch them via over-the-air updates that they manage.

Yes, you can still screw it up, but Amazon takes care of most of the hard bits that people get wrong.

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