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Comment by roody15 | Hacker News Reader

This article makes me think of an intercom system I maintain at one of our buildings. The fact that it is offline and each location is physically wired = it’s safe and secure. Another school district about 80 miles away had their systems hacked including phones, cameras and intercom .. as they were all meter and “cloud” based.

Just makes me rethink does everything thing need internet access. Sometimes perhaps simple safe and secure may fit better. Kind of off topic of this article but the concept just kind of got me thinking out loud.

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It depends on threat model. A wired intercom can be easily bugged with a physical implant. Discovering such a bug is also a completely different art from securing code, so different that some would claim it is more difficult to secure with any guarantee of confidentiality.

The cloud-based model might be leaky due to complexity but has the capability to deliver cryptographic assurance, which is a huge win in the long run. Modern cloud delivery is infamously insecure at the current point in time because most companies do not care about the security of their customers, and most customers are not aware of more secure options. But in the end as the technology matures it will be far more secure.

Of course, cutting off internet access is a good practice and most cloud connected systems play happily with a proxy.

> A wired intercom can be easily bugged with a physical implant.

I think the big impact here is that mundane systems which are now connected to the internet have become targets for remote vandalism or espionage.

Yeah love those threat models where physical access is a topic but basic MFA measures are not even done. This is like comparing yourself to Fort Knox while not even locking your door.

Physical access is not a problem when basic other measures are not taken. If physical access is your largest threat then you already safer than 90% of companies imo.

>Physical access is not a problem when basic other measures are not taken.

Why? In my home I have a Synology NAS server, not connected to the internet, where I store unencrypted data. It's not secure out of the box, and I didn't attempt to harden it.

You are welcome to hack me. Good luck.

Its possible to design internet connected systems that are secure and reliable. But usually "internet connected" means "dependent on continuous connectivity to some external service that needs to be actively maintained by a third party otherwise it'll stop working", which makes the "reliable" part difficult, and the fact that its exposed to a network with other devices on it and you have no way of knowing how competent that same third party is when it comes to security makes the "secure" part difficult.

Offline systems have way fewer failure modes such that they're often "secure and reliable" by just default, at least in comparison to the alternative.

We're talking about an intercom in a school system. Why would they care about encryption or someone listening in? They probably just want to be able to talk to other people on campus, and not have it be taken over remotely by some script kiddie and turning it into a node in a botnet.

Thus "It depends on threat model."

In this case, clearly the simpler tech was a better fit.

Why should I need Internet/cloud to get something as basic as encryption?

I don't think it's off-topic at all!

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