A joint study conducted between Northeastern University and Imperial College London revealed some pretty alarming trends about connected IoT end point devices. The study, the largest of its kind to date, found that a massive share of home devices routinely share tons of personal data such as IP addresses, MAC addresses, location info and viewing preferences with a broad array of third parties. Worst of all, many of these transfers were not properly secured, meaning they could be intercepted by yet another party. The article that follows provides more details from the study, as well as references to other important research on the topic.
Day in and day out, it’s becoming increasingly clear that the smart home revolution simply isn’t all that smart.
Security analysts like Bruce Schneier have been sounding the alarm bells for years now about the lax to nonexistent security and privacy standards inherent in the internet of broken things space. From refrigerators that leak your Gmail credentials to Barbie dolls that can be easily hacked to spy on kids, it’s increasingly clear that dumber technology is often the smarter solution. Not only do many of these devices actually make us less secure, their lack of real security has resulted in their use in historically large DDoS attacks.
