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posted by martyb on Wednesday October 21 2015, @09:47AM   Printer-friendly
from the consumers-are-steaming-mad dept.

A WiFi connected tea kettle, the iKettle, was recently tested by Pen Test Partners and found severely lacking, spewing forth WiFi access codes for encrypted networks to unencrypted clients with just a few tricks. As reported by geek.com:

Ken Munro, a researcher at Pen Test Partners, recently took to the stage in London to show off what he and his co-workers discovered. Their mark was the iKettle, which was proclaimed "the world's first WiFi kettle" by its creators on the crowd-funding site Firebox.

He was able to trick the kettle into connecting to an unencrypted WiFi network just by giving it the same name as the encrypted network it was originally connected to and using a directional antenna to make sure the signal was loud and clear. Once they'd hijacked the wireless connection, Munro and his partner were able to convince the iKettle to spill the key for the encrypted network.

All it took was two little commands sent via Telnet. And being the helpful little kettle that it is, it even handed Munro the key in plain text.

Original Story: http://www.geek.com/news/connected-kettles-found-brewing-up-security-problems-1637249/


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  • (Score: 3, Informative) by NCommander on Wednesday October 21 2015, @02:55PM

    by NCommander (2) Subscriber Badge <michael@casadevall.pro> on Wednesday October 21 2015, @02:55PM (#252780) Homepage Journal

    Hrm, I decided check after posting that. Wikipedia on the topic:

    The United States, starting from 2013 offers an NCEES Professional Engineer exam for Software Engineering, thereby allowing Software Engineers to be licensed and recognized.[27] Mandatory licensing is currently still largely debated, and perceived as controversial. In some parts of the US such as Texas, the use of the term Engineer is regulated by law and reserved only for use by individuals who have a Professional Engineer license. The IEEE informs the professional engineer license is not required unless the individual would work for public where health of others could be at risk if the engineer was not fully qualified to required standards by the particular state. Professional engineer licenses are specific to the state which has awarded them, and have to be regularly retaken.

    Need to change the resume, and look up the requirements of that professional engineer exam. Ah well, something to work towards \o/

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