Have an LED light that you can control with your phone? Show me your WiFi password! The more items that become Internet-enabled, the more security holes will pop up.
The LIFX lightbulb, yet another addition to the "Internet of things", allows a user to remotely change a network-connected bulb's color and strength from a computer or cell phone.
White-hat hackers with the UK-based security firm Context released their findings this week after successfully obtaining Wi-Fi credentials from 30 meters away.
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Smart Lightbulbs reveal WiFi Passwords
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(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 11 2014, @03:45AM
Why would I ever, ever want that?
Goddamn hipster trash. Hipsters don't use their WiFi for anything except uploading selfies of their junk, so who gives a fuck?
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Friday July 11 2014, @04:38AM
A bulb which will expose their junk for 27 years*** [au.lifx.co]
---
*** at 4 hours use per day
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by Tork on Friday July 11 2014, @04:57AM
Please don't try to act like you never wanted to set your basem^h^h^h^hlivingroom to red alert.
🏳️🌈 Proud Ally 🏳️🌈
(Score: 1) by NigelO on Friday July 11 2014, @09:42PM
But wouldn't that mean changing the bulb?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 11 2014, @06:25PM
(Score: 2) by meisterister on Friday July 11 2014, @03:58AM
Good job.
(May or may not have been) Posted from my K6-2, Athlon XP, or Pentium I/II/III.
(Score: 1) by Horse With Stripes on Friday July 11 2014, @03:35PM
Sorry, but controlling your lights via 'clapping' requires two claps in quick succession.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by frojack on Friday July 11 2014, @04:07AM
There are places where having an ability to control many different things by a compute would be nice, but realistically attaching everything via wifi is just a case of the only tool you know how to use being a hammer making every problem look like a nail.
This functionally belongs in the wire system, not building insecure radio based transceivers into every lighbulb. There are already power line wire protocols to deal with this.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 11 2014, @04:10AM
Power line wire protocol? But that's wired. Wired isn't wireless enough for hipster vulva pics!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 11 2014, @04:14AM
Please shoot yourself.
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 11 2014, @04:30AM
One selfie photo shoot, up and coming!!.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Friday July 11 2014, @05:04AM
But, but... the electrical-and-data guy I hired already wired the bulb sockets with cat7-WiFi... used WiFi-moster-cables no less (should have seen my invoice). What I'm supposed to do now, ignore them?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 11 2014, @05:07AM
This sort of thing actually has uses. I know... But I saw it put into a warehouse. They could remotely control each light as people walked around in it. So instead of 3 billion wires for control they had zigbee on each node tracking power usage and time to replace. It was quite the sight to see.
For your house where there are maybe 10-20 light bulbs that are easy to reach? Not so much. For a warehouse where the lights are 20 ft off the ground and there are 300 of them and wiring it up is a pain and costly, it is more interesting...
These sorts of things have their use. But mostly not in peoples houses.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 11 2014, @05:46AM
> So instead of 3 billion wires for control they had zigbee
That's part of the solution here too. Zigbee was designed for this specific sort of purpose. Wifi is so general use that it is much easier to screw up. Wifi is nice for one-offs, but anything that is intended to be part of a "system" should be using zigbee (or z-wave).
Meanwhile I disagree that wireless in general is bad for residential home automation. The retrofit market is huge and expecting people to re-wire their houses is a total non-starter. Nobody is going to drop a couple thousand dollars (minimum) to rewire their lighting. New construction - absolutely - but for retrofits it just isn't in the cards. But retrofits are where the big market is. Tens of millions of homes.
If the Zigbee guys were smart, they'd have a standard for zigbee over ethernet (not just tunneling it over IP) so retrofits could go wireless and new houses could go wired and still add wireless stuff afterwards if they wanted to and everybody would use the same protocols. But a quick google doesn't turn up anything meaningful for wired zigbee. That's kind of disappointing actually.
(Score: 2) by frojack on Friday July 11 2014, @07:22AM
You still have to wire to the bulbs, right?
They need electricity, No?
Use that power feed as a signaling circuit.
Use a socket [haworldonline.com] that is addressable over impulses on the power line, and control any type of bulbs.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by evilviper on Friday July 11 2014, @08:56AM
WHY? Why would you EVER need to send any signals to a lightbulb?
I prefer binary signaling:
1 = Switch on
0 = Switch off
If I want intelligence, it's going in the switch, not anywhere near the bulb. The switch turns on/off circuits with several related bulbs. I can't see why anyone would ever want to control ONE of the 8 recessed lights in their kitchen, instead of all of them at once.
And that switch would either be a timer, or a motion-sensor, not having anything to do with WiFi because, well, that just adds further abstraction and power consumption to doing the exactly same damn thing. It's not as if people are going to suddenly decide that they want individual lights to flash, at different intervals, while they're on the road... No, they want their lights to turn on while there at home and need them, and go off when they're not. WiFi adds NOTHING to this age-old and relatively simple problem.
And furthermore, the increasing efficiency of LEDs has changed the economics of any kind of control... For long-running lights, a $3 LED bulb will consume only 3.5W of power. That's $4 in electricity, if just left running 24/7 for a year. A good dusk to dawn sensor would only save maybe HALF that power, and costs more than $10/each, for a payback time of 5 years... And you'll be lucky if the light sensor doesn't, itself, FAIL in that time.
Of course there are simpler control switches, like a $3 magnetic reed switch which could shut off a light when a door is closed, or similar. But in general, it isn't worth adding complex power-saving equipment, unless you're controlling a large number of lights on a single circuit with it.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00ANI1Q9S/ [amazon.com]
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00F0BTTBU/ [amazon.com]
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B000Z9DCF6/ [amazon.com]
Hydrogen cyanide is a delicious and necessary part of the human diet.
(Score: 2) by ticho on Friday July 11 2014, @11:32AM
But what if I want do do a light show for the burglar who broke into my home while I am away. I need to distract him somehow while I remotely activate the spiked pit traps andpoison dart in the walls, using my Internet of Things!
(Score: 2) by RaffArundel on Friday July 11 2014, @03:12PM
Just so you can see why - I believe dimmers are still inefficient or useless for many new bulbs, so I would like to have the ability to have one bulb on in the bank on for night-time use. In this use case, I'd want the control panel to either pick a light at random or cycle, just to spread the usage. I guess I could also see controlling a bank of multicolored LED's whether it is simply controlling the temperature of the lighting or going full rave on it. However, the control signal (beyond off/on, which is just "power") shouldn't be stored/processed in the individual light, which I believe is your actual point.
I would only seriously consider WiFi if I had no other choice for the application. As I mentioned in a previous thread on home automation, I really don't like the idea of the home controls sharing my data LAN (including WiFi) so it would absolutely be on its own network. So now I have to maintain a VLAN or double the equipment/configuration? Additionally, my house is awash with WiFi devices, so I wonder how all the signals would impact the home automation. Unless someone could make a very compelling argument, WiFi doesn't seem to solve any problems.
Lastly, I never thought about "controlling" the lights in my closet. They all have a very simple plunger switch in the door frame - light comes on when it is opened. There is no other place in my house where the state of a door would determine if the lights (or anything for that matter) should be on or off. The light over my garage has a light sensor, but that just means the nearby streetlight pretty much prevents it from ever actually coming on. So, I would just need it for living areas, and unless it was the "change the lights when on vacation to give the illusion someone is home" I am likely going to be walking by the switch I need coming or going.
(Score: 1) by darkfeline on Saturday July 12 2014, @10:16AM
>A good dusk to dawn sensor would only save maybe HALF that power, and costs more than $10/each, for a payback time of 5 years... And you'll be lucky if the light sensor doesn't, itself, FAIL in that time.
>Of course there are simpler control switches, like a $3 magnetic reed switch which could shut off a light when a door is closed, or similar.
There's an even simpler control switch. It's called turning the lights on when you enter the room and turning them off when you leave it.
Join the SDF Public Access UNIX System today!
(Score: 2) by evilviper on Saturday July 12 2014, @12:13PM
Glad to hear that you, and everyone who will ever enter your home, is perfect, and never ever fails to shut off a light. And also that they have unlimited free time, never sleep, etc. Meanwhile, the rest of us have to consider such scenarios.
And incidentally, dusk to dawn sensors don't help with lights in any "room". They are for outdoor lights. I'd be interested to see where you place this "switch" that allows people to turn on the lights when they drive-up to a dark house and need to find their keys... Or how flawlessly you are able to turn yard lights on/off like clockwork, every single day, when it becomes too dark for a surveillance camera to record clearly. And how quickly you can run across a multi-acre parcel to turn all the lights on/off twice a day.
Hydrogen cyanide is a delicious and necessary part of the human diet.