SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
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
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Jay on Friday October 25 2019, @04:07PM (2 children)
I have a half dozen Phillips Hue programmable LEDs. I set them up to perform a sunrise and sunset every day.
Living where the daylight hours changes by 6+ hours over the course of a year I find the consistent artificial sunrise and sunset to be invaluable. Having "sunrise" at the same day every day really sets a more appropriate circadian rhythm than having sunrise slip to after I need to be up in the depths of winter.
Similarly, having the main living areas of the house start dimming towards a red-orange sunset around 8pm and wrapping up around 10:30pm really pushes me to go to bed. Along with f.lux on my computer doing a good red-shift, it's a lot easier to consistently go to bed on time.
While I could sort-of accomplish this with a dimmer and a timer, I adjust the color balance to mimic the sunrise and sunset as well. In the morning by the time the lights transition from deep red through orange, yellow, and towards a bluer white, I'm usually wide awake without an alarm. It's a really nice way to wake up, especially in the winter.
(Score: 3, Funny) by maxwell demon on Friday October 25 2019, @06:15PM
Groundhog day? :-)
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Friday October 25 2019, @10:37PM
That's an interesting idea.
As an experiment have you ever tried the visual equivalent of audio equalizing? Its kinda the opposite of what you're doing... I've considered playing with that. So bright lights on the west side of the house for sunrise and bright lights on the east side of the house for sunset to "equalize" light levels.
Another very strange illumination equalization experiment would be putting a window sensor on drapes and regardless of position of drapes the light level in a room could be constant. A strange hack on the multiple purposes of drapes, sometimes for privacy sometimes for light control.
There are practical applications of time based hacks for lighting... my bedroom closet faces west unfortunately and some form of illuminational equalization could actually be practically useful. Flip a switch and regardless of time of day I can pick clothes in sunlight, or something like that. Using hue control bulbs I could correct for red/yellow at sunrise and sunset.