Drones can hack your lightbulbs from 1000 feet overhead
Drones can hack your lightbulbs. It’s true. It sounds mad to say it, granted. But it’s true. PC World reports on a cyber attack on your so-called smart bulbs:
Researchers were able to take control of some Philips Hue lights using a drone. Based on an exploit for the ZigBee Light Link Touchlink system, white hat hackers were able to remotely control the Hue lights via drone and cause them to blink S-O-S in Morse code.
The drone carried out the attack from more than a thousand feet away.
If they can blink for help, presumably they can also be turned off and on in, say, an attack by an enemy? The war-time command to “Put that light out” would be null and void if the enemy was controlling the things.
“There is no other method of reprogramming these [infected] devices without full disassemble (which is not feasible). Any old stock would also need to be recalled, as any devices with vulnerable firmware can be infected as soon as power is applied,” according to the researchers.
Apparently, the Israeli and Canadian researchers have informed Philips of the design flaw and it’s been “patched”.
Isn’t technology marvellous.
Spotter: iotWorm
Posted: 7th, November 2016 | In: Reviews, Technology Comment | TrackBack | Permalink
