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Internet of (Insecure) Things

鈥淚nternet-of-Things technology is becoming increasingly popular, with smart home devices on the rise in Australia," said cybersecurity expert from the University of Sydney鈥檚 School of Computer Science, .

"Domestically, the household Internet of Things market reached $1.1 billion in 2018, which was a 57 percent increase compared to the previous year.

鈥淲e can鈥檛 deny IoT鈥檚 ubiquity, but are all these devices really secure? Are we opening up our houses to attackers to build botnets (ie: secretly using our smart home devices to attack other internet hosts), steal our data, or worse, control our houses?

鈥淧erhaps it鈥檚 time we looked at enforcing stricter regulations to make these devices more secure, which is already happening in the UK and US. The draft Australian is definitely a step in the right direction.鈥�

Tech giants under scrutiny: what to expect

鈥淯nder the European Union鈥檚 General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) framework we saw some big tech companies being held accountable for collecting personal data without proper consent," said Dr Seneviratne.

鈥淭丑别 incident also generated a much-needed and overdue discourse on how to collect and handle personal data.

鈥淚n California, where the majority of US tech-companies are based, the CCPA (California Consumer Privacy Act) will come into effect from January 2020.

鈥淵et, globally, we still don鈥檛 have a proper framework on how to balance the trade-offs between privacy and consumer utility, particularly with data that鈥檚 stored remotely. Will storing data on devices finally become trendy?鈥�

Cyberthreats on critical infrastructure 鈥� are we ready?

鈥淭his year we witnessed several global attack attempts on critical infrastructure, such as electrical grids and government services. These attacks are likely to become more frequent, more sophisticated and increasingly politically motivated," said Dr Seneviratne.

鈥淲hile it is important for governments and businesses to take all possible measures to detect and prevent these attacks, they must begin preparing for worst-case scenarios. In 2015 Ukraine bore the first ever attack of this kind. Attackers were able to disrupt the power supply of more than 200,000 people for a few hours.

鈥淒o governments and large service providers have proper incident response protocols in place to prevent such attacks? Are employees well trained to handle such threats? In some cases, the way we react to an attack could make things far worse.鈥�

AI-driven security and privacy threats

鈥淎rtificial intelligence is becoming pervasive: already we鈥檝e witnessed demonstrations that have used AI to bypass and facial-recognition software. For example, on one occasion, researchers showed how specially printed patterns on spectacle frames could trick state-of-the-art commercial facial recognition systems to think the wearer was someone else," said Dr Seneviratne.

鈥淚t can be expected that these attacks will soon go beyond prototypes and into the real world, with hackers using AI to circumvent traditional antivirus solutions, such as malware detection systems and intrusion detection systems.鈥�

Define: Internet of Things

The Internet of Things, or IoT, are physical devices that collect and share data and are connected to the internet. They include devices like smart speakers, televisions, and even fridges.