When the fridge opens your front door
Internet of Things is a world where the lock in your door or curtains in the window won´t keep uninvited guests out of your home. It´s easy to realise that you are vulnerable to the eyes of hackers when you give different applications permission to use the camera, microphone and location data of your phone. But when it comes to household devices or even your car, you less often think that someone else might take charge of them, even while you are using them. IoT- and online-security -gurus reminded about the dangers of internet in Web Summit Dublin and in Slush Helsinki.
I live in an 80 years old apartment building in Helsinki. My door is old and stiff, and when I close it, it really is closed. A couple of times I have forgotten my key inside the apartment and I have had to ask my friend to help me with his key. Nowadays I check several times that I have my key with me, before I close the door.
Most of the times I carry all my smart devices with me: phones, tablet and laptop. I don´t have internet in my tv, my coffee maker is basic and also my radio is traditional. I have a fridge and an oven, but there´s no dishwasher in my household. All the devices in my home wait obediently that their owner comes and switches them on.
Only two years ago I owned a remote-controlled lamp. It was great to adjust the brightness of the light and switch it on and off from the couch or bed. Until one day the lamp started to live the life of its own. It suddenly switched on early in the morning when I was going to sleep a little later. If there were someone else at home at the time, there wouldn´t have been anything extraordinary in it. But there wasn´t anyone. (Well, actually I felt as if there were someone else there, I just couldn´t see him.) I got the remote control, switched the light off and went back to bed. Soon the light was on again. After that I was in the middle of a half an hour light show where the lights went on an off, sometimes in faster, sometimes slower tempo.
I fought hard for the command of my remote control, without knowing who was my competitor.
Most likely some neighbor or constructor who was working nearby had a device that used the same frequency. I never got to know what the real reason for the show was. A friend of mine, who was an electrician, came and changed the lamp switch into traditional one. I figured that it would be more convenient to take a few steps to control my lamp — at least I was the one who was in charge of it.
This is an example of a very simple ”hacking”, or practically: there are just two people accidentally using the same frequency when the other one should politely move to another frequency or place. Anyway, this incident got me thinking what our things and devices can do together even if their owners don´t even touch them.
Internet of Things -guru Jim Hunter told in November in Web Summit, that people should relate to the devices of their smart homes as human beings — in a home where the owner is the boss. He would actually use the concept Internet of You rather than Internet of Things. He thinks the Maslow´s hierarchy works for things the same way as for people. If the basic needs are not met, there is no need for anything else either.
Every device needs food i.e. power. It has to work in the environment that it is supposed to work even if there is hot and dry or windy and wet. Before you can think about the connectivity of the devices you should make sure that the security level is good enough. The user should also know what kind of data the device collects and where it is stored. Highest level of the hierarchy of needs is the device´s ability to update itself and work intelligently even if the user doesn´t give any new commands or pays no attention to it whatsoever.
Many IoT-devices are quite cheap nowadays. You can buy them online without consulting anyone before using. If the device makes your life easier you just buy it without thinking the security of it. Quite many of us are still using the default password in our phones even though it can be so easily changed.
The smarter the device works without the user having to intervene, the better. It is so easy to forget that you even have a smart device in your home. When the devices are connected they are hackable through eachother. In theory, your fridge could open your front door, if the connections get messed up enough.
”Too many homes are visible online without any passwords”, the CEO of F-Secure Mikko Hyppönen reminded in Web Summit and in Slush. In addition to the physical curtains we also need virtual ones in our homes.
Mr. Hyppönen thinks that we have already lost the war for hackers, but we can still win one fight at a time. He spoke about layered security that can help when the basic security level isn´t enough. For the Internet of things we need to have special security devices that ensure the security and the control of the devices for the owner. Hyppönen introduced F-Secure´s security device Sense that can secure all the smart devices in the apartment at once. For now most of the devices need to be protected one by one — and there are still some devices in which there is no possibility to download any security application.
When the life cycle of the device comes to an end, it has collected much more than dust and finger prints. All the things that are in internet, do collect data about their users. Many equipment manufacturer programmes the devices to collect data even not realizing how it can be used.
”If you don´t need data from your customer, don´t collect it at all”, Harri Hursti appealed to the manufacturers and salesmen of all the smart things.
Online security guru and the founder on SafelyLocked Harri Hursti is much more cynical in his approach to the online security than F-Secure´s Mikko Hyppönen. He would definitely not recycle his old computer or smart tv just like that.
”Think like a criminal. Break everything with a hammer”, he suggested.
Read more:
The Hierarchy of IoT “Thing” Needs (Jim Hunter in Techcrunch)
This story is originally published in Finnish in Taajuus Dec 3, 2015.
Photos: Web Summit Media and Slush Media / Otto Vainio
