The Coming Internet-Of-Things Horror Show
Like many others, Bruce Schneier is sounding the alarm that the Internet of Things security nightmare isn't just about things like poor or non-existent security for thermostats: rather, that "software control" of an ever-widening pool of interconnected devices and systems designed to act without human intervention creates an urgent threat the likes of which we've never seen.
Schneier says, "A recent Princeton survey found 500,000 insecure devices on the internet. That number is about to explode. Autonomy. Increasingly, our computer systems are autonomous. They buy and sell stocks, turn the furnace on and off, regulate electricity flow through the grid, and-in the case of driverless cars-automatically pilot multi-ton vehicles to their destinations. Autonomy is great for all sorts of reasons, but from a security perspective it means that the effects of attacks can take effect immediately, automatically, and ubiquitously."
Schneier says, "A recent Princeton survey found 500,000 insecure devices on the internet. That number is about to explode. Autonomy. Increasingly, our computer systems are autonomous. They buy and sell stocks, turn the furnace on and off, regulate electricity flow through the grid, and-in the case of driverless cars-automatically pilot multi-ton vehicles to their destinations. Autonomy is great for all sorts of reasons, but from a security perspective it means that the effects of attacks can take effect immediately, automatically, and ubiquitously."
The compromise I made with the wife is having the heat on in the evening, when we're pretty much home for the night, and Saturday and Sunday. The programmables are just to make sure that she's not leaving the temperature up after we go to bed. I actually like being snuggled up in a warm bed and have the room colder, I sleep like a rock in the winter, but then when summer rolls around and we have those two or three weeks of 80+ deg F heat I can't sleep at all. We don't have an AC, it's only a few weeks out of the year it's ever that hot here. We're currently in the middle of the yearly heat wave here, it was 78 deg F last night when we went to bed. I use to live in North Carolina when I was a kid where it was way worse. It was almost the opposite, in the summer you kept the AC on and never left your house because it was over 100 deg F and you'd get heat stroke, in the winter you spent most of your time outside because the coldest it normally was for a few weeks out of the year was 40-50 degs F, nothing a decent jacket and long johns can't handle.
Story In Coming:
I remember one, shortly after we moved to NC from Canada, I got up late and had breakfast then went out to wait for the Bus. When the bus didn't come I walked to school thinking I'd missed it. The school was all locked up and I eventually went home. Turns out school had been canceled because of ice on the roads. All I saw was a few puddles, but no actual ice. I still get a chuckle thinking about it. Coming from Canada, it felt like school wasn't canceled here until you were up to your shoulders in snow.