Using your refrigerator against you

Our appliances are getting smarter.  Actually, I guess it would be more appropriate to say that our appliances are getting smart.  Not only are our TV’s, printers and routers connected to the internet, but our refrigerators can be connected too.  So while you’re out, you can get a message telling you that your milk is expiring soon and you’re running out of eggs.  While this is convenience, perhaps in the extreme, there is a big problem with having everything in our lives connected.  If a device can connect to the internet,  the device can be hacked.

According to this press release , the security firm Proofpoint uncovered a global cyber attack  of the Internet of Things.  The attack involved conventional household “smart” appliances.  The Proofpoint article states, “The global attack campaign involved more than 750,000 malicious email communications coming from more than 100,000 everyday consumer gadgets such as home-networking routers, connected multi-media centers, televisions and at least one refrigerator that had been compromised and used as a platform to launch attacks.”

Cyber criminals have begun attacking home routers, smart appliances and other components of the Internet of Things similar to the way botnets are formed on personal computers to carry out malicious activities.  These devices are often less protected than PC’s and therefore are more vulnerable to attacks.  The attack, occurring between December 23, 2013 and January 6, 2014, sent waves of malicious emails, targeting individuals and businesses worldwide.

Michael Osterman, the principal analyst at Osterman Research stated: “The ‘Internet of Things’ holds great promise for enabling control of all of the gadgets that we use on a daily basis. It also holds great promise for cybercriminals who can use our homes’ routers, televisions, refrigerators and other Internet-connected devices to launch large and distributed attacks.  Internet-enabled devices represent an enormous threat because they are easy to penetrate, consumers have little incentive to make them more secure, the rapidly growing number of devices can send malicious content almost undetected, few vendors are taking steps to protect against this threat, and the existing security model simply won’t work to solve the problem.”