Hacker News Reader

Comment by ptek | Hacker News Reader

I wonder if Retro washing machines and refrigerators (non-IOT) will go up in price because of this?

You could also just not give it a network, couldn't you?

Yeah, unless it has a cell modem, not that it's cheap enough to make sense today

I have personally installed equipment that included non-optional, always-on cellular data connectivity that allowed it to be configured and monitored from The Clown.

And Amazon rather famously included cellular connectivity with their early Kindle e-ink book-reading devices -- back in '07.

It's been done before. It can be done again.

Eh. If someone wants to waste money keeping up a data connection with my washing machine, I don't have much of an issue with it, as long as it doesn't have any microphones.

It would probably have a mic if they're going to do that

You can but they can constantly scan for any open connection that happens by and then dump cached data into it when one is found. Cell modems are becoming cheaper too, as is bulk cellular bandwidth, especially if buffered for periods of low utilization. In those cases, it might be less data since the connection is limited or the data harvester is paying. People with basement laundry rooms will have a built in advantage when dealing with this sort of thing.

One can still conduct deauth attacks fairly easily, or, if the device just picks the strongest open network signal, one can set up a dummy / honeypot WLAN right next to the appliance that has no internet connectivity, and as you note with the basement reference, faraday solutions can work well, too, not to mention simply removing or disabling the networking hardware.

This is also true for cars - it's often not terribly difficult to pull the fuse for the cellular modem provided you can procure a manual.

> conducting deauth attacks so your appliances don't spy on you

ted was right

Counterpoint: Stallman was right. Technology is a net benefit to society when users can control it, whereas stripping control from users (a la proprietary software) enables and promotes abusive, exploitative business practices like these.

I think that's already the case with some TVs.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com