Internet of Bings

[Dr Sardonicus]

I'm not sure this is in the IOT -- at least, yet -- but I've been seeing TV ads for motorized window blinds that can be programmed to open and close themselves. One selling point is the absence of the cords which are present in manually operated blinds, these cords being a hazard for the very young.

I have done enough rummaging online to learn that they do have a remote and can be programmed in "groups," and that some folks have actively pursued the objective of tying them in to their other "smart home" devices.

I can only imagine what kinds of mischief an outsider hacking in to the controls of window blinds might wreak

[retina]

https://boingboing.net/2019/03/05/jibo-swansong.html

Earlier this week, reporter Dylan J Martin tweeted a video of a $899 Jibo robot bidding its owner farewell, announcing that the new owners of his servers were planning to killswitch it; the robot thanked him "very very much" for having it around, and asked that "someday, when robots are more advanced than today, and everyone has them in their homes, you can tell yours that I said 'hello.'"

Then, the Jibo performed a melancholy dance

This is a neat little parable about the danger of the server-tethered, DRM-locked IoT future, a world where robot dogs and even juicers only work for so long as some people in a distant boardroom consider it worthwhile to keep them working

That $899 you paid wasn't enough to keep it running. You needed to watch more ads, and submit more personal information. So it is your fault for being so selfish. Next time let big-corp know more about you to fully monetise and control you. Then you can keep your stupid little $899 robot running and show it off to your shallow friends.

[Dr Sardonicus]

Originally Posted by retina

https://boingboing.net/2019/03/05/jibo-swansong.html That $899 you paid wasn't enough to keep it running. You needed to watch more ads, and submit more personal information. So it is your fault for being so selfish. Next time let big-corp know more about you to fully monetise and control you. Then you can keep your stupid little $899 robot running and show it off to your shallow friends.

Many years ago, there was a low-tech version called "pet rocks." They were supplied FOB by God. My young cousins had a couple. They had messages painted on them. On one of them, the message on one side said, "Please turn me over." The message on the other side said, "Thank you, that's much better." Perhaps the dead(?) Jibo robot has room for more than a couple of messages to be painted on it. It's probably not so easy to turn over, though.

One thing -- I'd make good and sure the cursed thing is dead. For all I know, it's still transmitting back to the Mother Ship...

[retina]

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DB4eV3VUIAElh_y.jpg

Yep, that is a great idea. To be forced to run the car for 20 minutes and burn fuel just so that you can have the latest "feature" that you will never use.

Cars should not be connected to anything external. Ever. Not for any reason whatsoever. No one that isn't in the car should have any control over it.

[kladner]

Originally Posted by Dr Sardonicus

Self-lacing shoes. They must be for people who are too fat to reach their own feet.

Maybe it's time to start a new thread about convenience decadence run amok. Because it's not just IOT items...

From Weird Al's version of Michael Jackson's :Bad:"

Well I've never used a phone booth
And I've never seen my toes
When I'm goin' to the movies
I take up seven rows

and:

When you're only havin' seconds
I'll be havin' twenty-thirds
When I go to get my shoe shine
I gotta take their word

[retina]

Originally Posted by Dr Sardonicus

One thing -- I'd make good and sure the cursed thing is dead. For all I know, it's still transmitting back to the Mother Ship...

Indeed. The company should keep some servers running to receive all that valuable private user data.

[retina]

https://medium.com/tenable-techblog/...b-fe2135e4adac

The nature of the smart home hub creates huge opportunity for an attacker. If they can control the hub, they get access to every device connected to the hub. Smart locks, the Apple TV, your Nest thermostat, even your smart refrigerator can be controlled by a remote attacker.

"Smart refrigerator" LOL.

After the device is rooted, a remote attacker can access all smart devices connected to the hub. The attacker can modify Nest thermostat parameters, shut down home security motion or COx sensors, or unlock door deadbolts as shown below in my proof of concept.

"Smart" homes are insecure. If you wanna open the door at my place then bring yourself and your crowbar. Leave your "smart" phone at home, it won't help you.

[Dr Sardonicus]

Originally Posted by Dr Sardonicus

I now have a "smart" device! OK, it's not internet-connected, but it is externally controlled. That is the hallmark of smart devices, isn't it?

It's an old clock a neighbor gave me. It has an internal antenna that picks up the 60 Khz time signals from the NIST Time-and-frequency radio station WWVB in Fort Collins, CO.

Update: The manufacturer told me that the moon phase would become less accurate over time.

Now, my clock is exhibiting a form of imposed obsolescence. Its default programming is to switch to Daylight Saving Time. This setting is correct. I checked.

The time change came over the weekend, on March 10, but my clock is still on Standard Time.

It appears that the reason is, the clock was made back in the old days, when Daylight Saving Time began on the first Sunday in April. That changed in 2007, when the relevant provision of the Energy Policy Act of 2005 went into effect, changing the beginning of Daylight Saving Time to the second Sunday in March.

[xilman]

Originally Posted by Dr Sardonicus

Update: The manufacturer told me that the moon phase would become less accurate over time.

Now, my clock is exhibiting a form of imposed obsolescence. Its default programming is to switch to Daylight Saving Time. This setting is correct. I checked.

The time change came over the weekend, on March 10, but my clock is still on Standard Time.

It appears that the reason is, the clock was made back in the old days, when Daylight Saving Time began on the first Sunday in April. That changed in 2007, when the relevant provision of the Energy Policy Act of 2005 went into effect, changing the beginning of Daylight Saving Time to the second Sunday in March.

DST is an abomination, an invention of the devil. We should be using UTC everywhere in the world, and out of it for that matter. Astronomers and the folk in the ISS have been living quite happily on UTC for many years.

Relativistically-minded pedants will point out the impossibility of synchronizing clocks of accelerated observers. The precision at which it makes any perceivable difference is so small it affects hardly anything in practice. GPS and GAIA are the only major systems needing this level of detail which come immediately to mind.

[ewmayer]

o Mark Zuckerberg's vision for Facebook sounds a lot like China, where I couldn't buy a cup of coffee without the app that dominates people's lives there | Business Insider

o Triton is the world’s most murderous malware, and it’s spreading | MIT Technology Review: The rogue code can disable safety systems designed to prevent catastrophic industrial accidents. It was discovered in the Middle East, but the hackers behind it are now targeting companies in North America and other parts of the world, too.

In attacking the plant, the hackers crossed a terrifying Rubicon. This was the first time the cybersecurity world had seen code deliberately designed to put lives at risk. Safety instrumented systems aren’t just found in petrochemical plants; they’re also the last line of defense in everything from transportation systems to water treatment facilities to nuclear power stations.

Uh, I seem to recall ransomware attacks directed at hospitals in recent news, which sure sounds like putting lives at risk to me. An NC reader comments further on the disingenuous "whocouldanode" framing in the article:

The article about the Triton malware briefly mentions Stuxnet, the malware developed by the NSA and Israeli Intelligence to attack Iran’s nuclear program, but downplays the obvious role that Stuxnet had in subsequent escalation of cyber warfare in general, and the targeting of infrastructure controls in particular.

From the article;

There have been only a few previous examples of hackers using cyberspace to try to disrupt the physical world. They include Stuxnet, which caused hundreds of centrifuges at an Iranian nuclear plant to spin out of control and destroy themselves in 2010, and CrashOverride, which Russian hackers used in 2016 to strike at Ukraine’s power grid

The following is a clear effort to shirk responsibility for throwing the first punch, so to speak.

However, not even the most pessimistic of cyber-Cassandras saw malware like Triton coming. “Targeting safety systems just seemed to be off limits morally and really hard to do technically,” explains Joe Slowik, a former information warfare officer in the US Navy, who also works at Dragos.

Other experts were also shocked when they saw news of the killer code. “Even with Stuxnet and other malware, there was never a blatant, flat-out intent to hurt people,” says Bradford Hegrat, a consultant at Accenture who specializes in industrial cybersecurity.

This “cyber-Cassandra” immediately saw, and widely commented on both the dangerous precedent that release of the Stuxnet worm represented, and the foolish disregard for inevitable blow-back.

I wasn’t the only one, there were numerous people pointing out the obvious danger of this reckless escalation in cyber space.

Stuxnet represented both a tactical road map, and a valuable technical model to cyber warriors everywhere, one which they would inevitably reverse engineer and deploy against the USA and its ridiculously vulnerable infrastructure.

Let’s not forget the hackers tool kits lost by the NSA and since deployed by our enemies.

Remember that Huawei built back-doors in its 5G equipment in a tit-for-tat response to the secret back-doors installed in American equipment, and then try to understand the implications of our abandoning the manufacture of the 5G equipment, leaving the Chinese in control of the world’s next generation wireless networks.

We’re the cyber gang that couldn’t shoot straight, led by a steady stream of short-sighted adjits, named Clapper, Alexander, and Hayden, some of which have invested in the search for personal profit based on products intended to ‘keep us safe’ from cyber threats that they themselves have a hand in propagating.

Tell me again how you considered attacking safety equipment morally off limits?

Tell me about any behavior you consider morally off limits?

IOW, it's only off-limits if "the bad guys" do it.

[Dr Sardonicus]

Originally Posted by ewmayer

o Mark Zuckerberg's vision for Facebook sounds a lot like China, where I couldn't buy a cup of coffee without the app that dominates people's lives there | Business Insider

o Triton is the world’s most murderous malware, and it’s spreading | MIT Technology Review: The rogue code can disable safety systems designed to prevent catastrophic industrial accidents. It was discovered in the Middle East, but the hackers behind it are now targeting companies in North America and other parts of the world, too.

Uh, I seem to recall ransomware attacks directed at hospitals in recent news, which sure sounds like putting lives at risk to me. An NC reader comments further on the disingenuous "whocouldanode" framing in the article:

IOW, it's only off-limits if "the bad guys" do it.

Almost a year ago, I posted a link here about one of our (allegedly) most spectacular "cyber" successes:

The technology topping the Soviets’ wish list was for computer control systems to automate the operation of the new trans-Siberian gas pipeline. When we turned down their overt purchase order, the K.G.B. sent a covert agent into a Canadian company to steal the software; tipped off by farewell, we added what geeks call a "Trojan Horse" to the pirated product.

"The pipeline software that was to run the pumps, turbines and valves was programmed to go haywire," writes Reed, "to reset pump speeds and valve settings to produce pressures far beyond those acceptable to the pipeline joints and welds. The result was the most monumental non-nuclear explosion and fire ever seen from space."

I note that this account is seriously in dispute. One of the stated grounds for doubting the story is that back in the early 1980's the Soviets simply weren't using digital systems to control their gas pipelines...