Items tagged with Internet-of-Things
Black Friday and Cyber Monday have come and gone, but the holiday season is still in full effect. There are lots of new Internet of Things (IoT) devices out there, and even more that will be given out as gifts. IoT devices cover a wide gamut of connected items that include just about anything that is internet-connected today, like thermostats, wearables, smart speakers, and even refrigerators. All of these IoT devices send and receive data and have the potential to open the door to hackers. The FBI is asking people who are bringing the devices into their homes if they know how the data the devices utilize is being collected and where the data is going. The FBI is urging everyone to protect themselves...
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A group of hackers claims to have a service that will allow anyone willing to spend $250 to send out a "marketing" campaign that can reach "every single printer in the world." The people are offering to sell advertisers a spot in "the most viral ad campaign in history" according to the advertisement for the service. Security experts the world over have had concerns about the security of Internet of Things (IoT) devices and the security of web-connected printers specifically. HP has in the past offered $10,000 in bug bounty money to get white hat hackers to find bugs in its printers. We also talked in depth about some of the security hazards that the IoT posed last year. Hackers have taken advantage...
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Nest has introduced new, cut down version of its smart thermostat that parent company Google hopes will appeal to a wider audience. Part of that entails making the new Nest E cheaper than the regular Nest thermostat, which it is. However, even though Nest E is not quite as feature-rich as the regular Nest, there is not much separating the two thermostats in the way of functionality. The new Nest E can do almost everything the regular Nest can do, save for a feature called "farsight" that allows the thermostat to detect when you're across the room, and then turn on the display to indicate the time or temperature. Beyond that, Nest E owners are not missing much, other than the heftier price tag...
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Yesterday at IoT World 2015 in San Francisco Samsung debuted ARTIK, a set of new technologies centered on tiny circuit boards crammed with processing and communications components that they designed to juke developers to create and configure new Internet of Things (IoT) devices, such as personal trackers, drones, robots, security systems, and the like. Of course, Samsung also intends to enhance their own product lines with ARTIK, including televisions, home appliances, and smartphones. In a blog post Samsung said of their new platform, "ARTIK provides a platform for developers who simply want to focus on building and testing new ideas for IoT. Rather than spend your time writing low-level...
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A company called littleBits has taken the hobby DIY kit to a whole new level with its Internet of Things-friendly cloudBit and Cloud Starter Bundle that allow you to add connected intelligence to any number of otherwise “dumb” items. The $59 cloudBit is designed to work without any need for wires or soldering, and it’s technically its own tiny computer board running Linux and packed with a FreeScale i.MX23 ARM926EJ-S processor, 64MB of RAM, a 4GB SD card, and an 802.11b/g USB adapter. There are also ADC and DAC I/O pins, as well as GPIO. littleBits mentioned a number of applications the cloudBit can be used for, including a DIY Nest alarm, a doorbell alert system that sends...
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The Internet of Things promises big things, but to get past the theoretical stage, companies need to develop practical solutions to major obstacles, not the least of which is finding a way for devices running on different platforms to communicate effectively. Microsoft and 50 other companies have teamed up on the AllSeen Alliance to develop open source solutions for IoT interoperability, but that’s not the only group doing that sort of work; major industry players have created the Open Interconnect Consortium, as well. The OIC currently consists of Dell, Intel, and Samsung as well as Atmel, Broadcom, and Wind River, and the group’s stated goal is to connect the next 25 billion devices...
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Following Google’s initial foray into the connected home front with the acquisition of Nest is an acquisition of Dropcam, a startup that makes a cloud-based WiFi video monitoring service. Rumors had emerged a few weeks ago that this was happening, but now the deal is going through for $555 million. According to the Wall Street Journal, Nest co-founder Matt Rogers confirmed that the company is paying cash for Dropcam. The deal will close pending regulatory approval. There are, of course, concerns over any Google-owned products and services in the connected home because of the search giant’s ad-focused revenue stream, but Rogers assured that neither Nest nor Dropcam will sell ads, and...
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Whuh-oh. In the quest to conquer the Internet of Things (IoT), Google’s Nest just had a hiccup; Nest Protect Smoke + CO Alarms are being “recalled” by the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission due to an alert failure problem. The issue is that the Nest Wave feature, in which a user can wave his or her arms near a unit to cancel a manual test or silence an alarm, can accidentally cancel a real alarm during an emergency. We put “recalled” in quotes because users don’t actually have to send the units back; they’re not faulty, they just need a software update to turn off the Wave feature. All you have to do, according to the CPSC post, is connect your Nest...
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Intel’s first quarter earnings report shows some uneven results across the company’s market segments and vast product portfolio, with a particular drop on the mobile side. Intel’s Mobile and Communications Group had a revenue of $156 million, but that was 52% from last quarter and down 61% year-over-year. In fact, sequentially, Intel’s revenue was down in most areas: its PC Client group was down 8%; the Data Center group was down 5%; the Internet of Things group was down 10%; and software and services dropped 6%. However, year-over-year the numbers are much rosier. With that metric, although the PC Client side was still down 1%, the Data Center group was up 11% and software...
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The Internet of Things is coming, and there are increasing numbers of products designed to make the IoT reality more feasible and easier to build for. Enter The HIO Project, which offers an open hardware platform that features a tiny mainboard rocking Freescale i.MX6 ARM Cortex A9 processor technology. The premier portion of the project is the HIO-EMB-1200 mainboard which Habey USA describes as “a Post-it sized, Lego-like ARM based open modular platform for rapid prototyping, quick application module development, and fast time to market”. The board is just 72mm x 80mm and includes the processor, RAM, iNAND flash, and HDMI and USB ports. It’s designed for expandability in 3D...
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Now we’re talking: Cisco is putting up hundreds of thousands of dollars in an effort to deliver the security solutions necessary to protect the growing wave of connected devices in the Internet of Things. IoT security is a huge deal, both because of the potential disasters that could befall individuals, businesses, and cities with unprotected smart devices and also because to date there are essentially no security measures in place for connected devices that aren’t computers, smartphones, or tablets. (Case in point is the now nearly legendary refrigerator hack. A refrigerator! Hacked!) LG LFX31995ST smart fridge (Note: There's no evidence that an LG fridge specifically was hacked)...
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Freescale Semiconductor announced its smallest-yet MCU, and it’s destined for the many objects in the growing Internet of Things (IoT) trend. The Kinetis KL03 MCU is a 32-bit chip based on ARM, and it promises lower power requirements in smaller devices than existing solutions. “When size is no longer a barrier to incorporating microcontrollers into edge node devices, we can start to redefine what’s possible for the Internet of Things,” said Rajeev Kumar, Freescale’s director of worldwide marketing and business development in a press release. The Kinetis KL03 MCU includes a 48MHz ARM Cortex-MO+ core with 1.71-3.6V operation, 32KB flash memory, 2KB RAM, and 8K ROM...
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Belkin has an intriguing suite of WeMo-branded smart devices for home automation, including light switches, motion detectors, integration with appliances, and more, but security firm IOActive recently discovered multiple vulnerabilities in WeMo--vulnerabilities that Belkin says it has now patched. Belkin’s statement on the subject reads in part: Belkin has corrected the list of five potential vulnerabilities affecting the WeMo line of home automation solutions that was published in a CERT advisory on February 18. Belkin was in contact with the security researchers prior to the publication of the advisory, and, as of February 18, had already issued fixes for each of the noted potential vulnerabilities...
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Google’s quest to purchase Nest, maker of smart, connected thermostats and smoke detectors, is complete. The search giant’s $3.2 acquisition has been approved, per a Google regulatory filing. The move brings Nest and all of its human resources, most notably former Apple senior VP Tony Fadell, under the Google umbrella, and it portends much more than just really cool thermostats. Google will use Nest to pursue connected devices, and it could lead to huge growth of new connected devices--which we now call the Internet of Things (IoT). Google has already demonstrated an interest in smart devices with its self-driving car program, and moving into our homes in a more integrated (intrusive?)...
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We’ve said it before, but it bears repeating as we enter the era of the Internet of Things (IoT): Anything that’s Internet-connected can be hacked. We’ve seen it recently with TRENDnet IP cameras and warned about it with Nest (even as Google snapped it up in a $3.2 billion acquisition this week). And now, a security company says that a global attack campaign has been launched from household smart appliances. Proofpoint says that some 100,000 connected routers, multimedia centers, smart TVs, and “at least one refrigerator” sent out 750,000 malicious emails. The attacks occurred between December 23rd, 2013 and January 6, 2014, with thrice-daily bursts of 100,000 spam...
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The completely connected home has long been a dream of futurists, and little by little that’s becoming a reality. The Internet of Things is growing, and smart TVs are a big part of that trend as they continue to ship with more and more intelligence baked in. Samsung’s latest SDK for its Smart TVs includes more than just the ability to pull in and view content from a multitude of sources; it ostensibly allows you to control appliances in your home. Samsung says that the new Smart TV SDK 5.0 will enable you to control the refrigerator, air conditioning, lighting, and so on with the Samsung Smart TV application. The SDK also offers the ability for developers to use HTML5 standards to...
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Pretty much everything that connects to the Internet is hackable--the exciting but vulnerable “Internet of Things”--but if we’re lucky, security researchers discover most of the vulnerabilities and exploits and help manufacturers patch them before cybercriminals make hay with them. Such is the case with Google Glass and Lookout Mobile Security. The Lookout Mobile Security folks identified a vulnerability in Google Glass wherein they could use a malicious QR code to hack the spectacles. Basically, as Google Glass “looked around” and took photographs, it scanned a QR code; however, that QR code was malicious and forced Google Glass to connect to a nearby WiFi hotspot...
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