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FBI Tells Jo(e) Sixpack to Become an Expert in IoT Security

posted by mrpg on Friday December 15 2017, @04:05AM   Printer-friendly
from the #-sudo-nano-/etc/hosts dept.

Phoenix666 writes:

Internet of Things users need to become sysadmins, America's Federal Bureau of Investigation says.

That's a summary of the Feds' blog post, published this week, in which the agency's Beth Anne Steele wrote that Things are best deployed on their own network, with an off-switch.

Steele's post offered a checklist explaining how consumers can best secure their stuff, including a suggestion to: "Isolate 'IoT' devices on their own protected networks" – which means you'll want a firewall between your broadband modem and the switch that connects the devices.

The checklist might reach beyond the capabilities of the average IoT buyer, who just wants to swipe the phone app to control their lights (because the wall is so far away), but on its own, that's a point worth making. So here's the full list, with El Reg commentary.

"Change default usernames and passwords?" Brain shutting down. Too. Much. Techno-babble.

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  • (Score: 2) by FatPhil on Friday December 15 2017, @06:10AM (6 children)

    by FatPhil (863) <reversethis-{if.fdsa} {ta} {tnelyos-cp}> on Friday December 15 2017, @06:10AM (#610143) Homepage
    If your solution is fixing the unwashed masses, you don't have a solutioh.
    --
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  • (Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 15 2017, @07:39AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 15 2017, @07:39AM (#610176)

    You're wrong. I have a Final Solution.

  • (Score: 2) by TheRaven on Friday December 15 2017, @11:01AM

    by TheRaven (270) on Friday December 15 2017, @11:01AM (#610235) Journal
    The solution is actually pretty simple. Most of the 'unwashed masses' use a box provided by their ISP as a router, wireless access point, firewall, and so on. Many of these already support acting as multiple virtual APs, so you can have a guest network that gives people access to the Internet but not to your local network (or so that the ISP can sell WiFi access anywhere near their customers' houses). They need to start to default to providing an IoT network that isolates devices from each other and the Internet and has specific policies to enable access to individual external servers if required.
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  • (Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Friday December 15 2017, @07:54PM (3 children)

    by maxwell demon (1608) on Friday December 15 2017, @07:54PM (#610421) Journal

    There's a simple solution to fixing the unwashed masses. It involves soup. ;-)

    --
    The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.