Just how hackable is my life? This is a question I ask myself a lot. Almost every day. I do my best to keep my passwords complicated and private. I have a 6-digit passcode on my iPhone. I make sure to lock my door. All the good stuff. But how much does that really matter? How much is out of my control? The scary answer is: a lot.
We live every day hoping that our banking information, our Facebook passwords, our private photos aren’t subject to a massive hack and released to the world or exploited for monetary gain. It’s entirely out of our hands. Are you aware of what software your bank uses to ensure that you aren’t destroyed monetarily at the click of a mouse? Do you know what kind of encryption sits between you and utter ruin? You probably don’t and neither do I.
We put too much faith in our institutions from a digital security perspective. But what else is there to do? Besides joining the company of which you are a stakeholder and personally optimizing their security system, there isn’t much. Even figuring out how safe your stuff is hard to do. You really have to sift through terms and conditions or security statements to even get a remotely good idea of what a company is doing to protect your information. And that’s not cool, guys.
Another extension of this scary thought is the ever-growing world of the Internet of Things or IOT. More and more aspects of our everyday lives are moving into the digital realm. For example, Every light in my apartment is controlled by my smartphone. The bulbs themselves, Philips Hue, are connected to a hub via a pseudo-Bluetooth connection, which is then wired to my router. Cool right? Yes. Very cool. Bow down, they’re awesome. But are they safe? Just like my banking information or my Twitter password, who knows?
Philips allows my lights to be controlled by my smartphone (or watch, or desktop application) if I’m on the same wifi network as the lights. This makes sense. They extended the functionality more recently by allowing users to create a MyHue account and control their lights from anywhere. Users simply send the command from their phones, the command is then sent to Philips’ servers, which then connects the command to an account and sends the command accordingly along to the house of the user from whom the command originated. Awesome functionality, but think about that for a second. With Philips in control of this functionality, who is to say that my lights aren’t going to shut off any moment because some hacker in Spain thought it would be funny.
Luckily, turning my lights off remotely isn’t inherently dangerous. Yes it could cause me to trip in the dark, or if the hacker decided to turn my lights on remotely, cost me a few extra dollars on my power bill. But think about what company hosted IOT data and command ability means for more dangerous aspects of the home. Take the stove for example. There are already a multitude of app-enabled stove units. This is extremely convenient as one could turn down the heat on the brownies from the other room or verify that the burner is turned off from the grocery store. But what happens when the same person who decided to shut off your lights decides to turn on your stove? Or turn off your car on the highway. This is disturbingly possible and there are even YouTube videos demonstrating this extremely dangerous feat can be accomplished rather simply. Don’t believe me? Take a look: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MK0SrxBC1xs It’s shocking and very, very real.
I’m not writing this blog post to scare you, though some of the ramifications of poor information security are truly horrifying. I’m writing this to make you more aware of how safe your information is in the hopes that you will ensure the safety of others’ information as you, my fellow PLAers, move into the working world yourselves. Let’s ensure that the hackers of the future can’t shut my lights off from Spain. Okay? Awesome.
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