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posted by Fnord666 on Friday October 25 2019, @10:48AM   Printer-friendly

Smart bulbs are expected to be a popular purchase this holiday season. But could lighting your home open up your personal information to hackers?

Earlier this year Amazon's Echo made global headlines when it was reported that consumers' conversations were recorded and heard by thousands of employees.

Now researchers at UTSA have conducted a review of the security holes that exist in popular smart-light brands. According to the analysis, the next prime target could be that smart bulb that shoppers buy this coming holiday season.

"Your smart bulb could come equipped with infrared capabilities, and most users don't know that the invisible wave spectrum can be controlled. You can misuse those lights," said Murtuza Jadliwala, professor and director of the Security, Privacy, Trust and Ethics in Computing Research Lab in UTSA's Department of Computer Science. "Any data can be stolen: texts or images. Anything that is stored in a computer."

Anindya Maiti, Murtuza Jadliwala. Light Ears: Information Leakage via Smart Lights[$]. Proceedings of the ACM on Interactive, Mobile, Wearable and Ubiquitous Technologies, 2019; 3 (3): 1 DOI: 10.1145/3351256


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  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by VLM on Friday October 25 2019, @01:09PM

    by VLM (445) Subscriber Badge on Friday October 25 2019, @01:09PM (#911619)

    In any case it is improbable that they have designed these things with even a modicum of update capabilities.

    The problem with the industry is its the same people designing, making, and buying equipment regardless if its something like insteon or zwave which doesn't connect to the internet (although you can make buggy and un maintained closed source devices that connect between insteon and zwave and the internet...) vs devices that inherently are just internet connected scada systems that are wide open for the whole world to hack.

    Its "OK" that I could never upgrade the firmware on my Insteon switches, either they work or they don't and its pretty simple and nobody can access them but my insteon adapter hub thing connected via serial port ... OTOH, something like an Alexa Echo, that would be a huge problem.

    To mess with my zwave system you have to be in radio range of my house or break into something else in my house that has zwave access (that being the hass.io hub system, which doesn't have general internet access so good luck). To mess with a general internet connected IoT device, you merely need to also be on the internet, a slightly larger sized threat model, LOL.

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