Hi Guys,

I am reposting a blog post written by the great Bruce Schneier because everyone should read it. The message is clear – be careful about what smart devices you allow into your home. In this case an Avast engineer successfully hacked a coffee machine demonstrating how easy it is to access smart devices in your home.

A piece of the article is below and you can read the full version here:


As a thought experiment, Martin Hron, a researcher at security company Avast, reverse engineered one of the older coffee makers to see what kinds of hacks he could do with it. After just a week of effort, the unqualified answer was: quite a lot. Specifically, he could trigger the coffee maker to turn on the burner, dispense water, spin the bean grinder, and display a ransom message, all while beeping repeatedly. Oh, and by the way, the only way to stop the chaos was to unplug the power cord.

[…]

In any event, Hron said the ransom attack is just the beginning of what an attacker could do. With more work, he believes, an attacker could program a coffee maker — ­and possibly other appliances made by Smarter — ­to attack the router, computers, or other devices connected to the same network. And the attacker could probably do it with no overt sign anything was amiss.


Seriously consider what devices you allow into your home. Most of the newer smart devices have zero security and can be accessed remotely in seconds. When you connect these devices to your network you give them (and the rest on the Internet in many cases) full access to your network and the other devices connected to it.

Let me know if you need any advice.

Thanks,
Max Roberts
Incognito Privacy Care