<story><title>A vigilante trying to improve IoT security</title><url>https://gizmodo.com/this-hacker-is-my-new-hero-1794630960</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>kbuchanan</author><text>This captures the essence of the type of activism that I so dislike — an unaffected, third party (a person who doesn&amp;#x27;t use your bluetooth lightbulb) taking the job upon himself to tell &lt;i&gt;you&lt;/i&gt; what level of security &lt;i&gt;your&lt;/i&gt; lightbulb should employ... By breaking it.</text></item><item><author>adamclarkestes</author><text>I&amp;#x27;m the author of the Gizmodo post. Having covered IoT hacks for a few years, it&amp;#x27;s obvious that drastic measures would be necessary to convince manufacturers to build more secure products. While I&amp;#x27;m not necessarily endorsing this hacker&amp;#x27;s methods, I do salute his taking a stand. It might land him in jail. But still, the mission is worthwhile.</text></item><item><author>086421357909764</author><text>It&amp;#x27;s all fine and well until one of those improperly configured devices are a medical device or something critical. Yes I understand that&amp;#x27;s part of the problem, but proving a point with risk isn&amp;#x27;t the right answer either. Every Dialysis machine i&amp;#x27;ve seen runs windows xp, which any security professional will tell you is game over, but given the market hasn&amp;#x27;t provided an alternative, it&amp;#x27;s becomes a necessity to figure out how to protect these improperly updated &amp;#x2F; configured &amp;#x2F; designed devices.&lt;p&gt;Fandom of actions that impact others in a negative way is bad, and one day someone will do something they feel is right that impacts you and you&amp;#x27;ll say.. well that&amp;#x27;s not fair.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>jerf</author><text>We&amp;#x27;re not unaffected anymore. Mirai did a lot of damage to a lot of people. Very diffuse damage, sure, but a lot of damage.&lt;p&gt;Note we&amp;#x27;ve had worms and such for decades now and most of them don&amp;#x27;t deliberately break things. It&amp;#x27;s generally far more profitable to exploit the resources than simply destroy them. Brickerbot almost certainly wouldn&amp;#x27;t be if we weren&amp;#x27;t all getting affected.</text></comment>
<story><title>A vigilante trying to improve IoT security</title><url>https://gizmodo.com/this-hacker-is-my-new-hero-1794630960</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>kbuchanan</author><text>This captures the essence of the type of activism that I so dislike — an unaffected, third party (a person who doesn&amp;#x27;t use your bluetooth lightbulb) taking the job upon himself to tell &lt;i&gt;you&lt;/i&gt; what level of security &lt;i&gt;your&lt;/i&gt; lightbulb should employ... By breaking it.</text></item><item><author>adamclarkestes</author><text>I&amp;#x27;m the author of the Gizmodo post. Having covered IoT hacks for a few years, it&amp;#x27;s obvious that drastic measures would be necessary to convince manufacturers to build more secure products. While I&amp;#x27;m not necessarily endorsing this hacker&amp;#x27;s methods, I do salute his taking a stand. It might land him in jail. But still, the mission is worthwhile.</text></item><item><author>086421357909764</author><text>It&amp;#x27;s all fine and well until one of those improperly configured devices are a medical device or something critical. Yes I understand that&amp;#x27;s part of the problem, but proving a point with risk isn&amp;#x27;t the right answer either. Every Dialysis machine i&amp;#x27;ve seen runs windows xp, which any security professional will tell you is game over, but given the market hasn&amp;#x27;t provided an alternative, it&amp;#x27;s becomes a necessity to figure out how to protect these improperly updated &amp;#x2F; configured &amp;#x2F; designed devices.&lt;p&gt;Fandom of actions that impact others in a negative way is bad, and one day someone will do something they feel is right that impacts you and you&amp;#x27;ll say.. well that&amp;#x27;s not fair.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>rblatz</author><text>&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.theguardian.com&amp;#x2F;technology&amp;#x2F;2016&amp;#x2F;oct&amp;#x2F;26&amp;#x2F;ddos-attack-dyn-mirai-botnet&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.theguardian.com&amp;#x2F;technology&amp;#x2F;2016&amp;#x2F;oct&amp;#x2F;26&amp;#x2F;ddos-atta...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;Very few people that use the internet were unaffected by shitty IoT security.  And that seems like it was just the start of it&amp;#x27;s capabilities.  Something needs to be done to destroy these cyber weapons.  If your stupid light bulb is recruited into a cyber weapon, then it should be prevented from harming others.</text></comment>