David VanderWaal, vice president of marketing for LG Electronics USA, left, and Michael George, vice president of Alexa, Echo, and Appstore at Amazon.com Inc., speak about the Amazon Alexa partnership with the LG InstaView Door-In-Door smart refrigerator during the company's press conference at the 2017 Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas, Nevada, U.S., on Wednesday, Jan. 4, 2017. Photographer: Patrick T. Fallon/Bloomberg.
Gartner says by 2020, the number of connected devices will reach more than 21 billion. With all those people online, cybercrime is on the rise. According to data in an article in CSO Online, humans now outnumber machines as the top target for cybercriminals. Top that off with the fact that by 2021, there will be 73 million smart homes in North America, which will make up more than 50% of all households.
Those smart devices that open and unlock your doors, shop for you online, play your music and control your thermostat are also susceptible to cyber attack.
Yossi Atias, General Manager of IoT Security atBullGuard wanted to illustrate how vulnerable the consumer home is to cybersecurity attack, so he staged a hack of a fictional home with multiple Internet of Things (IoT) devices including Amazon Echo and an IP camera at Mobile World Congress Americas on September 13 in San Francisco.
Atias illustrated with the live hack how easy it is to hack into a secure smart home via multiple connected IoT devices found in homes today including an IP camera, smart alarm, smart lock and Amazon Echo to gain physical entry into a home.
“Many smart home devices are notoriously insecure," said Atias. "It makes it easy for hackers to exploit those vulnerabilities and gain access to your most prized possessions – your home, data, and family."
Atias isn't the only one who is aware of the vulnerabilities. In May 2017, an 11-year-old boy sixth grader in Austin, Texas used his teddy bear to hack into the Bluetooth devices to manipulate a robotic teddy bear at a cybersecurity conference in the Netherlands.
HP has been at the forefront of cybersecurity. The company has focused its attention on threats through the IP printer port. They have maintained that everyone knows that a PC can be hacked, but not a printer which has a hard drive, chips and runs on a Wi-fi network and is easy to hack.
“What should concern us about the emergence of more connected devices everywhere, from our homes to public infrastructures, is the rapid increase in a new style of sweeping destructive attacks, out to cause damage and render technology inoperable," said Boris Balacheff, Chief Technologist for System Security Research and Innovation at HP Labs. "In this emerging threat landscape, it is key that we design all connected devices with security in mind from the start."
Balacheff says it's imperative that new connected devices are designed with security built-in from the hardware up, not just for protection, but for cyber-resilience, resilient even to destructive cyber-attacks.
Jennifer Kite-Powell is a writer who looks at the intersection of technology and science with art & culture, health, environment and industry. You can follow her on Twitter @jennalee.
