Why you should be very afraid of your fridge

Wouldn’t it be cool to have your fridge connected to the Internet? Don’t take my word for it, since my word is “No.” Ask consumers, whiz- bang enthusiasts for “change” regardless of direction or effect and … um … hackers

We are moving at high speed into the so-called Internet of Things. Nowadays you’re not remotely cool if you only have your computer and your telephone attached to the “Web.” But here’s the thing: It’s not safe.

Do you ever notice how the Internet can be frustratingly slow and annoying? I don’t want to seem spoiled here. When I was a boy we didn’t have email, browsers or streaming and although we coped somehow, I like looking things up remotely, filing columns without driving to the office and so on. So (in the spirit of comedian Louis C. K. ridiculing people complaining about spotty wireless on an airplane instead of appreciating being in a chair in the sky) I try not to be bitter when downloading a document actually takes several minutes.

Or paranoid. Except whenever the Web seems “slow” in contemporary terms, or I’m having trouble reaching my email server or the library, I wonder what’s going on out there that I don’t know about. Like that time “your digital video recorder — or at least a DVR like yours — knocked Twitter off the Internet.”

No, really. I quote here from the Feb. 15 issue of Bruce Schneier’s excellent “CRYPTO- GRAM” newsletter, excellent here being a word meaning “scary.” And “quote” here means “crib most of this column” because his lead article offers so much to ponder. Meanwhile, “ponder” in this context means “fear” because he i mmediately continues “Someone used your DVR, along with millions of insecure webcams, routers, and other connected devices, to launch an attack that started a chain reaction, resulting in Twitter, Reddit, Netflix, and many sites going off the Internet. You probably didn’t realize that your DVR had that kind of power.”

Or, I dare say, that Twitter had been knocked off- line. Or that it could be. It worries me even though I often feel that if Twitter did not exist, or Facebook, nobody would mope about saying “You know what I really need so life can seem worthwhile?” then describe either of them in principle or as primarily used in practice. I certainly feel that way about online fridges.

I can’t begin to see the problem to which they are a solution. I get the advantages of the fridge over the icebox, and the icebox over pease porridge in a pot three days old. But what’s wrong with putting things in a machine that just keeps them cold until you’re ready to eat them or throw them out if they smell funny?

I actually worry about becoming mentally and physically slack and helpless if devices do everything for us including reading barcodes and telling us what to eat and buy and when. And I certainly worry about the security risks.

As Schneier also notes, “We no longer have things with computers embedded in them. We have computers with things attached to them. Your modern refrigerator is a computer that keeps things cold ... Your car is no longer a mechanical device with some computers inside; it’s a computer with four wheels and an engine. Actually, it’s a distributed system of over 100 computers with four wheels and an engine.”

By some estimates there will be 50 billion things online by 2020. And these ubiquitous sensor-equipped devices can be used to track or snoop on us. They can be hacked, for weird DDS ( Distributed Denial of Service) attacks or in more malevolent ways. It’s not just driverless cars that could be hijacked digitally, as a prank or worse. As Schneier says, in your current car, “The steering wheel no longer turns the axles, nor does the accelerator pedal change the speed. Every move you make in a car is processed by a computer…”

Surprised? There’s the real issue. We’re doing all this, and more, without reflecting on it. It’s not just cars and fridges. It’s nuclear reactors, hospital records and fitbits. It’s everything.

Schneier calls computers and smartphones relatively secure because customers and thus providers care about security enough to pay for it up to a point. But not billions of items like baby monitors, DVRs and fridges. Whether his analysis of security vulnerability as a classic economist’s “externality” requiring regulation is appropriate is a subject for another day. But turning the “Internet of Things” into his decentralized “world- size robot” without noticing is reckless.

Let’s ignore trendy panics like the alt- right movement or carbon dioxide, and focus on real dangers like antibiotic resistance and a ubiquitous insecure Internet of Things we’re becoming dangerously dependent on for limited gain.

We need to be smart here. Our toasters don’t.

YOU’RE NOT COOL IF YOU ONLY HAVE YOUR PHONE ATTACHED TO THE ‘WEB.’ BUT HERE’S THE THING: IT’S NOT SAFE.