Why Hackers Love your Wi-Fi (and how to protect it)
Wi-Fi hacking is all fun and games until somebody hacks the Wi-Fi on a roller coaster. That’s a lesson one professional security researcher found out the hard way.
Several years ago at Disneyland, the roller coaster car he was riding was click-click-clacking its way along its track until it abruptly stopped. The hacker, who requested anonymity to avoid potential legal consequences, says he and other thrill seekers were alarmed and confused. Their ride was dead on its tracks, and nobody knew why.
As seconds stretched into long minutes suspended in the air above the park, the hacker remembered that he had in his backpack a WiFi Pineapple, which he’d been using for a penetration-testing gig earlier that day. The Pineapple can detect and intercept Wi-Fi traffic by pretending to be an access point for phones, tablets, laptops, and Internet of Things devices. Wherever there’s Wi-Fi—from homes to airports to cafes to amusement parks—there are access points. (Read More)
Kaspersky IoT Scanner Wants to Secure your Smart Home
Kaspersky Lab has launched its plan to secure the Internet of Things with a new software release that can secure the smart home. The Kaspersky IoT Scanner is a new addition to the company’s existing Android app that is able to monitor your smart and IoT-connected devices. The service scans your home’s Wi-Fi network to automatically detect IoT devices connected to it, including the like of routers, smart cameras, TVs, printers, games consoles, and more. Once detected, the scanner is able to remember the devices, and can notify the user when any of them connect or disconnects from the home network.
The solution is also able to scan your devices for known security vulnerabilities to protect your home from threats. So if a device has any open connection ports (meaning that anyone from the Internet can connect to them), the app is able to alert the user and provide advice on how to stay safe. Kaspersky IoT Scanner will also notify the user regarding any weak passwords on their network, adding an extra level of security to your smart devices. (Read More)
Hacking IoT Devices: How to Create a Botnet of Refrigerators
You see threat lists and news articles that mention the Internet of Things (IoT) getting hacked as a major concern all the time. But what does that mean?
To many people, the entire concept is an abstraction. Some folks still see hacking through a 90’s movie lens where the hacker smashes keys and says stuff like, “I’m tapping into the mainframe.” So, envisioning a scenario where someone could hack a thermostat and do much more than turn on your heat is kind of difficult.
Granted, there are some cases where serious harm could be done—say, for instance, hacking into key systems in someone’s car. But that’s really the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the potential ways someone can wreak havoc by hacking IoT devices. Today we’re going to talk about one of the more ambitious ways hackers are using hacked IoT devices. (Read More)
