imagine a criminal using your
nanny cam to watch your house
or to scream at your child—or even
to post footage of your home on a
crime boss’s website. And suppose
your refrigerator were spewing spam
e-mail, enraging people you’d never
even met.
The Internet of Things has been
touted as many things. But what you
haven’t heard is that it could be your
worst enemy. Yet all of these incidents
have actually occurred, according to
news reports. And it’s likely that even
more disturbing transgressions have
been taking place unbeknownst to
homeowners. For example, researchers
have discovered that in some cases,
they can hack the Internet of Things
to intercept each document you print
and divert it to a remote site, use your
smart TV to bug your house, and even
control the traffic light on the corner
outside your home.
For although the Internet of Things
offers great convenience by linking our
gadgets—an estimated 50 billion of them
worldwide by 2020—it can also let hackers
take control of your house, your car,
and even your body.
The vulnerabilities lie all around you.
A recent HP Research study reported
that the average Internet of Things
gadget has an astounding 25 security
flaws, and 70 percent have at least one
such vulnerability. Many of these problems
may yield to solutions like those
adopted by the personal computer
industry decades ago. As I’ll explain
later, there are also some that require
new approaches that take into account
the vast scale and narrow profit margin
of the emerging world of Internetaugmented
products.