Police warn of hacking threat via our online fridges

A POLICE chief has called for all household appliances which connect to the internet to be given a security rating.

Durham chief constable Mike Barton warned about the danger of the so-called ‘internet of things’, as ordinary household items such as fridges and kettles become internet-enabled.

The officer, who leads the National Police Chiefs Council on crime operations, said consumers had no idea how secure their devices are.

He said customers should be given the information on products connected to the web in the same way as they can check the energy efficiency of appliances. ‘Whenever you go into a store now, you see fridges and it’s A down to F in terms of its energy efficiency. Where are the security ratings?’

Mr Barton said it was a ‘worrying development’, adding that hackers would not ‘invade’ an insecure fridge to find out what its contents were.

Instead, they would use insecure products as a back door into your home network in order to commit crimes such as identity theft.

He said: ‘You’ve got a situation where we don’t know what the security is like in the devices we are buying ... and yet that is the most significant component.’

Chris Hodson, of web security firm Zscaler, said: ‘We’re likely to see an entire generation of hardware devices that will simply need to be replaced.’

‘Worrying development’