Risks of the ‘internet of things’

Have you ever stopped to think about how many items in your home are connected to the internet?

Have you wondered why? The umbrella term for all these connected appliances, electronics and other devices is ‘‘smart’’. We live in the age of the smart home, smart car, smartphone, smart remote, smart thermostat, smart fridge ... well, you get the idea.

But just how secure are all these internet-enabled devices? Not very, according to two internet security experts with whom I spoke.

One of those experts is Bruce Schneier, fellow and lecturer at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government and author of the forthcoming book, Click Here to Kill Everybody: Security and Survival in a Hyper-connected World.

‘‘We prefer our software full of features and inexpensive – at the expense of security and reliability,’’ Schneier said.

And because our appliances, electronics, cars, medical equipment and other devices essentially have become generalpurpose computers, they are now at risk for the same hacks as any other computer that runs internetbased software.

‘‘We now have millions of computers – in the form of devices – connected to the internet,’’ said Matthew Green, an associate professor of computer science at Johns Hopkins University.

This interconnectivity is known as the ‘‘internet of things’’.

‘‘These computers are all vulnerable,’’ Green said. ‘‘They all have software running on them and, unfortunately, not all of it was written by the best software developers. And to make matters worse, the software often doesn’t get updated.’’

Both Schneier and Green pointed to the largest distributed denial-of-service attack (DDoS), which happened in October 2016 and infected computers with malware, known as botnets, to bombard servers with traffic until they collapsed.

Hackers took down Twitter, Netflix, Reddit, CNN, and many other websites around the world for almost an entire day, Schneier and Green both said.

What was the innocuous conduit for accomplishing this majorly disruptive feat? Webcams, DVRs and home internet routers with weak passwords and poorly written software.

What can consumers do to protect against a hack?

Green’s advice includes:

❚ If you are buying something on Amazon from an overseas company you’ve never heard of, there’s a good chance there is some sort of security vulnerability you should be worried about.

❚ If you connect a device to your wifi network, you should assume the device is a risk to the security of everything else on the network.

❚ You should look into whether a device has a software update mechanism and, if it does, see whether the software updates automatically or manually.

❚ If you don’t need internet-ofthings functionality and there is another option, take it.

Schneier’s guidance? ‘‘Demand that the government regulate this,’’ he said. – Chicago Tribune