It’s midnight and Joseph is still browsing the webpages. Joseph is a heavy internet consumer, he loves video streaming and chatting with other people, mostly Live Cam Girls – you know what I mean right? On the other end, his friend is able to see whatever he’s doing. Tom, a nerd with crazy internet skills is able to hack Joseph’s computer and view everything without his knowledge. Remember, Tom is kilometers away from Joseph but he can creep his way through Joseph’s computer. Internet connected houses open doors to hackers.
Back to reality, Lakhani, a security researcher at Fortinet, accomplished a hack without any coding skills. He visits Shodan.io, a website where anyone can find a huge trove of Internet-connected devices, from baby monitors to cars, cameras and even traffic lights. The website is like a search engine for the Internet of Things. According to CNN, the website allows him to hack into the video stream, picked at random, just by entering word “admin” for the camera’s username and password.
Internet of things has many goodies in store and it’s believed that life will be amazing since everything will be connected and controlled from a single point. However, increased hacking cases is the flip side of the promised internet of things.
A research done by Juniper Research revealed that the number of IoT connected devices will number 38.5 billion in 2020, up from 13.4 billion in 2015: a rise of over 285%. The huge percentage will either be a demerit or a merit to human life.
Internet connected houses
Soon, human beings will have zero say in many things. Tanuj Mohan, executive and co-founder at connected lighting company Enlighted said that things are designed to be used by humans and not computers. Mohan’s company monitors lighting systems in large commercial buildings to help his customers improve energy efficiency. Enlighted also makes sure intruders don’t take control of the lighting.
Samsung is now clinging on the fact that internet of things is the future. The company placed massive investment in smart homes and internet of things. “There are three things we want to give to consumers: peace of mind, control and flexibility,” Alex Hawkinson, CEO of SmartThings, said during Samsung’s press conference at the IFA electronics.
Connected devices can be disastrous because where one weak link can bring down a chain of connected devices. Anyway, to protect your devices from malicious internet users. Firstly, change the default password. You may also be able to set up your connected “things” so they’re accessible from only your private home network. You can still log in from afar via a virtual private network. It takes some extra steps for you, but that means it would also take extra steps for a hacker.
