“We’re going to go from 12 billion devices we currently have, to over 30 billion devices by 2020, all interconnected. That’s going to add to the ease of our life but if all these devices are easily hacked into it could mean we could have a whole new host of security concerns,” said Sen. Mark Warner, a Virginia Democrat. Warner is a member of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and co-founder of the Senate Cybersecurity Caucus.
Smarthome devices are vulnerable because of poor programming. “Devices like these often come with a really bad and easy to guess username and password,” Lyne said.
Cybercriminals then take over IoT gadgets by searching the web for those with default passwords. Guessing the password allows the hackers to take over the device and harness its processing power for attacks.
Accordingly, a closed caption television camera or DVR “is enough of a reason to attack you so that you can be useful to attack other people. You are a target,” said Lyne.
Join the conversation as a VIP Member