Time to get rid of weird connected appliances! <<SKYNET MUST DIE>> check this

[Pete Turnbull]

On 23/10/2016 20:41, Alexis Kotlowy wrote:
> On 24/10/2016 06:05, Alexandre Souza wrote:
>> A good linux machine running a firewall wouldn't make all of this
>> work flawlessly?
>
> The problem is the 'average consumer' isn't going to bother with that.
> They'll just wire up their IoT devices, for convenience sake, and leave
> it to do its thing.

True, but for many devices it's irrelevant because you can't easily get 
to them from the internet.  Some security cameras are an obvious 
exception, along with other things you might connect to directly while 
"out and about" - things you have to set up "port forwarding" for. 
Nevertheless, most IoT devices only talk (outgoing) to some server in 
some cloud, and are reasonably safe, at least until the server is 
attacked.  That's true of my thermostats and central heating control, 
for example, and you won't easily get to them over my wifi because they 
use almost-random 30-character keys.  Attackers go for the low-hanging 
fruit.

> Unfortunately the number of people who will do this
> far outweigh the people who know what they're doing.

Also true :-(  And that applies as much to many manufacturers as to end 
users.  Two of my above-mentioned thermostats were originally limited to 
an 8-character alphanumeric key, until I made a fuss about WiFi Alliance 
standards.

As for modems/routers, over here (UK) the ISPs tend to go for fairly 
random 12-20 character passwords which aren't even obviously related to 
the MAC address.  Even so, I ignored my ISP's offering in favour of 
something a bit more high-end, carefully configured, but I still see an 
average of about two connection attempts
a second.

-- 
Pete
Pete Turnbull