Will IoT kill us someday?

| 2016-12-03 | Cyber security, English, Information Security, Perspectives, Security Governance, Vie privée

herzschrittmacher_auf_roentgenbildWhen you’re working in the security industry, being paranoid is kind of natural (or is it the other way around?). So, when you see how easy people, processes and technologies can be hacked, you become rapidly suspicious of anything. We all know bad things can happen and most of the time we try to mitigate the risks (without even thinking too much about it). Business as usual, so to speak. However, while I have a good idea of the risks our future is bringing to us (what makes me even less worried about my business’ future), it seems that most people don’t imagine how much danger Internet will bring to them. So here are some clues.

The new buzzword that has a lot of attention in the media lately is probably IoT: The Internet of things. According to the media, it’s IoT who allowed hackers to put websites like Amazon and Netflix on their knee for a few hours on October 21st. But that’s a mistake. Although IoT has led to some specific new technologies like Bluetooth 4.1 or ZigBee to accommodate the low consumption and the low cost requirement necessary to embed technologies in nearly all objects, it is probably a mistake to see IoT like something new or something different. As Bruce Schneier said recently in front of the US congress, we should not see this has objects with computers in it (and an Internet connection) but rather see it as computer that do things. A Tesla is a computer with wheels (and when you see how Tesla manage its updates and is manufacturing process, it is closer to the Software industry than to the car industry way of working), a smartphone is a computer with a microphone and a 4G connection, a connected fridge is a computer with an extra cooling system, and so on.

Bottom line, these connected objects are all computers and we must treat them like it. So, like for all computers when it comes to managing security, we should think about patch management, access control, hardening, change management, release management, network segregation, encryption, key management, user awareness and training and all these processes and best practices. Unfortunately, the issue is that most connected object manufacturers didn’t spend enough time and money in designing secure objects, easily upgradable, with strong and secure communication protocols. Consequently, the future is now… and we are not ready for it.

But what is our future? Let’s get a glimpse at it. In the tenth episode of the second season of “Homeland”, Nicholas Brody help terrorists to kill a political figure by giving them his pacemaker serial number, allowing them to hack it and induce a heart attack.

In another TV show, “Blacklist”, a computer genius triggers remotely the airbag of a car while driving, causing the car to crash and the death of its driver.

Is this Science-Fiction? Unfortunately, not anymore! Exploits on “smart” cars become more and more frequent. More recently, a British and a Belgian researcher have devised a wireless wounding attack on pacemakers (1). While the latter exploit need specific and rather costly hardware (3 to 4.000€), we are just one step away of having a ZigBee or BT 4.2 interface. Do you wanna kill someone with your smartphone? Don’t worry, you won’t have to wait too long.

At the same time, as other device with less deadly capabilities are spreading over the world, they provide a potential army of unsecure devices that can be used for Distributed Deny of Service attacks, like it was seen recently, but, why not, to perform parallel tasking, helping to brute force passwords, crack cryptographic keys or hide communication sources by bouncing thousand of times on these little soldiers that we provide to these hackers. Nice isn’t it? We purchase the devices that will be used against us in the near future. To be honest, for most people, including for a lot of security specialist, it is not easy to make the difference between a secure IP camera and an insecure one, simply because we don’t have time to test everything and there is no useful and relevant certification for that. So think about the number of “computers” you have at home: Your internet router, you tablet, your PC or your Mac, your smartphones, your videosurveillance camera, your printer, your TV box, your Bluray player, your “smart” TV, your alarm, your new “connected” fridge, your smart thermostat, the PSP of your kids, the IP doorbell and so on… Think about it, in your home alone, you may have more than 10 little future soldiers for the next hacker’s army. Android, iOS or IP cameras, they nearly all have exploitable vulnerabilities.

So, we have an army and we have soon legion of potential targets for the new kind of attack: DoL attacks (Denial of Life). Imagine ransomware targetting your pacemaker, large scale attack on cars to cause traffic jams or worse, new hitmans (version 3.0) changing the medication of patients in hospital, overdosing people. Just watch any episode of “Person of Interest”, they were just a few inches away from the actual reality… and we are getting there.

It sounds crazy, isn’t it? As bruce Scheneier said, Internet is not that fun anymore. It’s not a game anymore. Things are getting serious and we should act accordingly. Not only at government level but also in industries and in the civilian world. We should ask our suppliers, our manufacturers to secure their devices, to make them safe AND easy to control.

To be continued…

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