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The security of IoT networks is a challenge that needs to be addressed at a global scale. This blog will uncover some risks associated with IoT network security.
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Everybody's trying to get in on the big-money future of IoT, and now "everybody" includes Microsoft with Windows 10. Larry Dignan at ZDNet put together a look at Windows 10's role in IoT - as it's been described by Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella at the Gartner Symposium ITXpo, at least - which suggests that the new OS will be a central platform for IoT systems of all types. Specifically: Windows will be able to run on everything from sensors to wearables to whatever computing shift emerges. Or, as Patrick Thibodeau at ComputerWorld interpreted it: [Nadella] sees the company's upcoming operating system Windows 10 as integral in managing every aspect of the IoT, from the sensors, mechanical systems, to the applications and analytics that underlie it. Those are some pretty big promises, but as Nadella said, Windows 10 is "the first step in a new generation of Windows as opposed to just another release after Windows 8." After all, that would be Windows 9, right? Check out Dignan and Thibodeau's coverage of Nadella at the Gartner Symposium ITXpo for more details on Windows 10 in general. It looks like a promising future: Yo Ebola, I'ma let you finish but #Windows10 is gonna have the greatest virus of all time #WindowsTillIDie — Bill Gates (@BillKingGates) October 6, 2014
As the Internet of Things becomes a ubiquitous idea and a fact of life, what happens to all the aging and increasingly insecure Things? According to Wired's Robert Mcmillan, responding to a recent question on the security of IoT from Dan Geer, this may be a serious problem [1][2]. The solution, Mcmillan suggests, is to design these devices with an expiration date. In other words: they need to be programmed to die. The problem may not be too severe now, but the future of the Internet of Things will look different than it does now. Security will likely loosen, because software will be a part of everything, and it tends to be the case that things mass produced to that degree experience a bit of a drop in quality. That, Mcmillan argues, presents a problem: ...all code has bugs, and in the course of time, these bugs are going to be found and then exploited by a determined attacker. As we build more and more devices like thermostats and lightbulbs and smart trashcans that are expected to last much longer than a PC or a phone, maybe we need to design them to sign off at the point where they’re no longer supported with software patches. Otherwise, we’re in for a security nightmare. A similar argument came from Bruce Schneier's interview with Scott Berinato about how future bugs like Heartbleed could impact IoT [3]. Schneier's conclusion is that processes must be built into IoT devices and development to allow for regular patching and securing of embedded systems. How practical is that, though? Mcmillan points to some recent scenarios where these fears have already come true: the lack of support for Linksys routers infected with Moon Worm, for example. Long-term patching would solve these issues, but will the increasing number of organizations developing IoT products be forward-thinking enough to care? It's also not as if the problem will fade as the products become less popular, Mcmillan says: Researchers have studied the way that security vulnerabilities are discovered, and what they’ve found is that security bugs will keep cropping up, long after most software is released... in fact, they’ll only get worse. Open sourcing technology as it ages may also be a solution, Mcmillan says. However, even that is imperfect and requires a lot of cooperation from companies who may not be enthusiastic about such cooperation, as well as a base of developers interested enough in the technology to maintain it. So, creating devices with an expiration date may be one of the most practical solutions. Otherwise, what happens when IoT is everywhere? What happens when we stop taking care of the things that we build? [1] http://www.wired.com/2014/05/iot-death/ [2] http://geer.tinho.net/geer.secot.7v14.txt [3] https://dzone.com/articles/heartbleed-iot-how-much-worse
Sometimes you just have to track the sleep habits of the living things around you. For example, maybe your children wake up at mysterious and unexpected times. Otherwise, in the case of Ricky Robinett at Twilio, you might just be wondering how much your dog sleeps while you're away. One solution, as it turns out, is a sleep tracker built with Tessel and Twilio. Robinett has written a solid tutorial on how to build such a thing, and all it requires is a Twilio account (of course), along with a Tessel microcontroller and accelerometer module, a USB battery pack, and a somewhat cooperative dog. From there, Robinett walks you through everything you'll need to know: setting up Tessel and sending SMS, using Twilio libraries, interacting with the accelerometer, and so on. Then, once you're all set up, you're ready to take an action rarely described in technical circles: Deploy to Your Dog The end result (depending on your personal choices regarding dog-clothing) is something like this: (via Ricky Robinett at Twilio) It keeps you updated via text message on your dog's sleeping habits by generating an update after five minutes without movement. So, if your dog is just a particularly lazy creature who spends extended periods of time staring, stationary and wide-eyed, at a fixed point on the wall, it sounds like you might get some inaccurate numbers. In general, though, it's a cool idea: regular updates letting you know how long your dog has slept. So, as long as nobody hacks your dog and starts running Doom on it (as those pesky hackers are known to do these days), it looks like a fun project.
It's fairly clear that not everybody agrees on how to define the Internet of Things, but certain aspects are more generally agreed upon. For example, DIY computing (along the lines of Raspberry Pi) is opening up in a big way because of the growth of IoT, allowing developers to solve a lot of new problems in new spaces and think outside of the box a bit. To illustrate that point, Sunanda Jayanth at Contract IQ has assembled a round-up of SDKs for IoT and wearable devices. The list covers six SDKs, each with a brief description: Google’s Android Wear SDK Samsung’s Tizen SDK IBM + Libelium WunderBar by relayr Microsoft Windows on Devices u-blox + ARM Some of these SDKs - Windows on Devices, for example - are not available quite yet, but have been announced and are coming soon. Beyond the round-up, Jayanth warns of possible hurdles for IoT, despite the bright future: At the stage of growth that IoT is in right now, incumbents are in danger of stifling growth simply by accidentally introducing complexity. If your things and my things have to talk together, we need a common language. A rapid development and uptake of common platforms and standards that encourages seamless cooperation is what the industry is in dire need of. But the solution Jayanth suggests, is open source software. Industry-wide standards for architecture and APIs could help prevent these problems, and developers taking advantage of these new SDKs and growing a community - an open source community, ideally - around these new technologies could go a long way to keeping things orderly in the future. That, and making sure we don't end up with mountains of bug-ridden, unkillable IoT devices.
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