Collaborate Disseminate
As devastating as the latest widespread ransomware attacks have been, it’s a problem with a solution. If your copy of Windows is relatively current and you’ve kept it updated, your laptop is immune. It’s only older unpatched systems on your computer that are vulnerable. Patching is how the computer industry maintains security in the face of rampant Internet insecurity. Microsoft,… Continue reading Ransomware and the Internet of Things
Ransomware isn’t new, but it’s increasingly popular and profitable. The concept is simple: Your computer gets infected with a virus that encrypts your files until you pay a ransom. It’s extortion taken to its networked extreme. The criminals provide step-by-step instructions on how to pay, sometimes even offering a help line for victims unsure how to buy bitcoin. The price… Continue reading The Future of Ransomware
Criminals go where the money is, and cybercriminals are no exception. And right now, the money is in ransomware. It’s a simple scam. Encrypt the victim’s hard drive, then extract a fee to decrypt it. The scammers can’t charge too much, because they want the victim to pay rather than give up on the data. But they can charge individuals… Continue reading WannaCry Ransomware
This is a good summary article about the horrible security of St. Jude pacemakers, and the history of the company not doing anything about it…. Continue reading Security of St. Jude Pacemakers
There’s a new malware called BrickerBot that permanently disables vulnerable IoT devices by corrupting their storage capability and reconfiguring kernel parameters. Right now, it targets devices with open Telnet ports, but we should assume that future versions will have other infection mechanisms. Slashdot thread…. Continue reading New Destructive Malware Bricks IoT Devices
Interesting acoustic attack against the MEMS accelerometers in devices like FitBits. Millions of accelerometers reside inside smartphones, automobiles, medical devices, anti-theft devices, drones, IoT devices, and many other industrial and consumer applications. Our work investigates how analog acoustic injection attacks can damage the digital integrity of the capacitive MEMS accelerometer. Spoofing such sensors with intentional acoustic interference enables an out-of-spec… Continue reading Acoustic Attack Against Accelerometers
CloudPets are an Internet-connected stuffed animals that allow children and parents to send each other voice messages. Last week, we learned that Spiral Toys had such poor security that it exposed 800,000 customer credentials, and two million audio recordings. As we’ve seen time and time again in the last couple of years, so-called "smart" devices connected to the internet –… Continue reading IoT Teddy Bear Leaked Personal Audio Recordings
Here’s a video interview I did at RSA on the Internet of Things and security…. Continue reading Podcast Interview with Me
This is my talk at the RSA Conference last month. It’s on regulation and the Internet of Things, along the lines of this essay. I am slowly meandering around this as a book topic. It hasn’t quite solidified yet…. Continue reading Me at the RSA Conference
Botnets have existed for at least a decade. As early as 2000, hackers were breaking into computers over the Internet and controlling them en masse from centralized systems. Among other things, the hackers used the combined computing power of these botnets to launch distributed denial-of-service attacks, which flood websites with traffic to take them down. But now the problem is… Continue reading Botnets