Why Smart Appliances Question Your Intelligence And What You Can Do To Stop It.

You’re walking through Best Buy one day, and one by one different products catch your eye, particularly the smart ones: TVs, and those iPhone-controlled home appliance systems, the latter being surprisingly inexpensive. “You mean that for under 50 bucks I can control my garage-door, thermostat, and lights with my smart phone?” you excitedly ask yourself.

It’s very appealing—who doesn’t want to have that kind of blithe control over the various systems of your home? And besides—how cool is that anyway!

This week, however, there has been a string of news stories about the security risks of these smart home devices, especially in the wake of the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, and on-going leaks by former NSA employee Edward Snowden of US government spy tactics through everyday email, phone calls, and text messages. Indeed, as the Toronto Star headlined, “Cyber security [will be] a major concern for 2014.” Or, as Peter Bright states in a Jan 9, 2014 article for ArsTechnica, that we should resist these new devices, “because the ‘internet of things’ stands a really good chance of turning into the ‘internet of unmaintained, insecure, and dangerously hackable things’.”

The problem with these devices—whether smart TVs, smart phone-controlled home appliances, or any appliance connected to your device through Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, is that they are now equipped with bidirectional networking interfaces, which exposes the internet to the appliance and the appliance to the internet. The result? A whole slew of security risks.

In an article by Peter Edwards of the Toronto Star, Jan 22, 2014, Proofpoint, Inc., a corporation specializing in corporate security, reported this month that, “cybercriminals have targeted Internet-connected home devices, since they’re much easier to hack than home computers or tablets.” And, according to Proofpoint, Inc.’s study, 750,000 malicious email messages were sent out from more than 100,000 household gadgets, including a fridge, between December 23, 2013 and Jan. 6, 2014.”

According to Professor David Skillicorn of the Queen’s School of Computer Sciences, he would not trust a thermostat or garage door opener that can be turned on and off from a cellphone, for “there’s no simple way to make it [work] just for me, guaranteed.” Many of these smart appliances are running Windows or Android software, and can be used to send SPAM, but also denial-of-service attacks and all sorts of things that are opened up when a device is connected to the Internet. That makes all internet-connected home products like thermostats, microwaves, and even security cameras all security risks.

So, if you’re on that stroll through Best Buy, and are attracted to the latest smart TV, or in the throes of a simple and inexpensive way to connect your lights, thermostat, and garage door to your iPhone, think again. The security risks imposed on your home—and those, of course, around you—by that seemingly innocuous device may have a much greater cost than a meager 50 bucks.