How Poor Security Could Destroy the Dream of Smart Cities
From movies, television, games, books and, to our own imagination we have long dreamed of futuristic cities overflowing with technology. In our current environment we could not be closer to some version of the future depicted in so many forms of media. Although unlike many of those stories that paint the future in black and white the current climate of technology is much grayer. Rarely do you find in science fiction the details surround the long painful years of growing pains, mistakes, and setbacks that it takes to achieve such a utopian vision of futuristic cities where everything works perfectly. Currently in 2020 the technology to achieve even a base level of “Smart Cities” either exists and is being implemented or is under active development by many different multinational corporations and research institutions. The dream of having smart technology integrated into every aspect of a major metropolitan area is quite the expensive one, costing many billions of dollars for larger cities like Los Angeles, New York, London, Paris, and Beijing and not to mention hundreds of millions for other smaller cities around the globe. With so many billions of dollars spent on such technology and integration it is of the upmost importance that the technology being invented is as secure as it can possibly be.
Obviously whenever it comes to technology involving network and device security many questions and fears arise due to potential interference or exploitation from either malicious hackers from rival governments or individuals acting on their own accord. As well as privacy concerns people will have regarding how their own governments could potentially use smart technology to spy on their own citizens. All of these concerns compounded with the response time for governments and companies to roll out fixes for exploits in smart city technology adds to the worry that even if there is abuse of the systems the abuse may go unnoticed for months or years. This would mainly be due to the scope and complexity the web of technology would be in a large smart city. Depending on how connected all of the different technologies a smart cities is comprised of it may also be hard to detect where the hack originated from inside of the system resulting in wild goose chases to track down the exploits and bugs. Currently hackers rarely hack things that could wind up killing or injuring someone as in general it lacks profit motive and carries a more severe punishment if caught. However, this is not to say that if a fully integrated smart city came online bad actors would not bother trying to hack it.
The long-waged war between hackers and cyber security professionals fight will for the foreseeable future continue to be a game of tug of war between the two sides. The problem that the cyber security field has always faced is they are always playing defense while authorities track down and arrest hackers. If you look at history every great city has fallen to outside invaders eventually from Rome to Constantinople and Berlin to name a few. The point is that a smart city will need to be defended in the same manner as an ancient capital city would be. Constantly upgrading and bolstering the defenses of technology the city uses to not remain stagnant thus never giving hackers the time to rest and break through the gates. However, no system can ever be perfect regardless of the effort put in to protect it which is why on top of bolstering the digital defenses thought would also need to be given to bolstering the physical security of devices throughout a city. The physical security of these devices would benefit from larger cyber crimes police task forces in cities who’s job it would be to ensure the physical protection and security of key hubs of the Smart City to make sure they have not been physically tampered with.
The 2014 video game Watch Dogs deals heavily with hacking but more so about hacking different systems throughout the city of Chicago. In Watchdogs there is a system called cTOS which connects everything from traffic lights, cameras, ATMs, road bollards, water, and gas mains and, pretty much any device with an internet connection. Your character is able to hack all of these systems with just one program on his phone relatively effortlessly. Now this is mostly for the sake of fun game play for the player but does paint a bit of a worrying picture when you think of how long it actually could take to abuse such systems in the real world. With enough time it could very well be as easy as Watchdogs makes it look in the game, for example a relatively harmless use could be hacking a light to turn it green so you could get to where you want to earlier. A much more terrifying thought would be if a terrorist were able to access gas mains or the power grid through a hole in a smart cities defense. In fact, one of your abilities in Watchdogs was the ability to create a blackout in a several block radius around you if you needed to escape from the police or other criminals. While much of the Watchdogs series of games over exaggerates the ease of hacking a smart city it does serve as a good cautionary tale as to the real risk a smart city could face.
Another risk that smart cities face is the worry from citizens that their government will somehow use all this interconnected technology to spy and keep tabs on its own citizens. This fear can lead a population into actively voicing their dislike of converting their city to a smart city. This fear has turned into reality in Hong Kong over the last several months of protesting against China. There have been videos posted of protesters either vandalizing or destroying security cameras with facial recognition capabilities. If people cannot trust that the people who are managing these system are not using any potential information gathered for unsavory purposes, then mistrust will spread. If it were to come out that either governments or corporations were collecting data about the residents of smart cities, it would erode the public trust in smart cities. This could very well lead to a widespread hatred of smart city technology that could last for generations setting back mankind’s technological advancement back in some regards.
Moving forward both companies and governments need to be very conscientious when it comes to the development and protection of smart devices that will be used in the development of smart cities. If not enough thought or time is put into securing devices there is the potential for loss of life or widespread infrastructural damage not to mention the goodwill of the people. This said companies and governments are not flawless and there will be problems with the security of smart cities which is why it is important we ensure there are as few flaws in the technology used in smart cities. This will help secure having a future that actually looks like the future we envision so often in media and or own imaginations.
