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Comment by throwaway2048 | Hacker News Reader

throwaway2048

I suspect this is going to cause a significant problem in the future with regaurds to all these embedded home routers that stopped receiving updates 6 months after release. Its essentially an unmonitored backdoor to 95% of networks on earth.

http://www.devttys0.com/2013/10/reverse-engineering-a-d-link...

http://arstechnica.com/security/2014/02/bizarre-attack-infec...

Not to mention the similar situation with android phones.

What a spectacular mess.

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Routers and switches are a concern, but I think the telsa example in the article is one of the best ones. Appliances that are relatively easy to replace is one thing, major purchases like a car, home automation, or similar items is much more concerning. We see how GM and Toyota reacted with their recalls. Are we going to see something similar from the future (less startup-y/more corporate) nests of the world?

What happens when my alarm/sprinkler system is tied to my intelligent door locks and a simple buffer overflow via bluetooth allows a cracker to flood my entire business with a simple drive by attack? The internet of things brings with it an unprecedented level of risk.

> Appliances that are relatively easy to replace is one thing

But if the hardware still works fine, replacing it because of software issues isn't really justified. It's far less wasteful to do software upgrades.

> But if the hardware still works fine, replacing it because of software issues isn't really justified. It's far less wasteful to do software upgrades.

Unless you're a hardware manufacturer who wants to sell new hardware.

To be clear, I didn't disagree with that statement:

> Routers and switches are a concern...

Yeah, the potential for extortion is pretty amazing. "We've owned your home network. Send 50 BtC here or we turn up the heat in your $60,000 aquarium.

Phones and small consumer electronics (even routers) have a relatively short operating life. It's a much bigger problem with systems that have a much longer expected service life and higher replacement costs, like cars, refrigerators, HVAC, thermostats, etc.

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