Thursday, February 06, 2020

Appleinsider: Philips Hue smart bulb allows hackers to attack your network

Philips Hue smart bulb allows hackers to attack your network
By Malcolm Owen, Wednesday, February 05, 2020, 04:50 am PT (07:50 am ET)

Owners of Philips Hue smart bulbs are being urged to check its firmware, after the publication of a vulnerability in how the accessories communicate with each other over Zigbee could allow an attacker to gain control over the whole home network.

I'm glad to see that Philips is going to be releasing a patch to close this attack vector, but this also underscores something I've been saying for a long time: IoT is not mature enough to be considered safe and reliable. Far too many smart appliances have been designed with little or no thought to security, and customers are the ones paying the price.

I love the concept of smart appliances, and I would love to have a home full of them, but there's no way I'm going to install them when there's a very real risk that doing so will allow criminals and hackers access to everything else on my LAN. I hope this tech will be secured in the future, but it certainly is not today.

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