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| January 15, 2013
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Internet of Things

Internet of ThingsAdding computer communication to otherwise dumb devices isn’t new. As far back as the 1990s, a whole list of Internet-enabled Coke machines around the world had varying functionality. The granddaddy of all Internet of Things was the Coke machine at Carnegie Mellon University, set up in the 1970s.

Internet of Things vulnerable to false data injection

Smart meters vulnerable to false data injectionThe power grid delivers electricity to charge iPads and run data centers. The power grid connects users with electricity producers through interconnected transmission and distribution networks. In these networks, system monitoring is necessary to ensure reliable power grid operation. The analysis of smart meter measurements and power systems is a routine part of system monitoring.

Help Net Security reports that most energy security professionals told nCircle they did not believe smart meters are secure enough. When asked, “Do smart meter installations have enough security controls to protect against false data injection?” 61% of the 104 energy security professionals said “no”. False data injection attacks introduce arbitrary errors into state variables while bypassing existing techniques for bad measurement detection to exploit the power grid.

Patrick Miller, the founder, CEO, and president of EnergySec noted, “Smart meters vary widely in capability and many older meters were not designed to adequately protect against false data injection. It doesn’t help that some communication protocols used by the smart meter infrastructure don’t offer much protection against false data injection either.”

“… we need to make sure that all systems that process usage data, especially those that make autonomous, self-correcting, self-healing decisions, assure data integrity,” Miller added.

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  • Not-so-smart meters costly | Herald Sun

Railroad Sensors Predict Derailments Wirelessly

Railroad Sensors Predict Derailments WirelesslyUnion Pacific (UNP), the nation’s largest railroad company, has deployed Internet of Things technology throughout its network. according to Dailywirless.org, the IoT can predict certain kinds of derailments days or weeks before they are likely to occur. This will improve safety and avoid millions of dollars in damages.

According to the article, Union Pacific, which moves 900 trains a day, started using acoustic sensors 10 years ago to monitor noises from vibrations of ball bearings in train wheels. This allows the company to get trains off the track before a faulty bearing causes a derailment. More recently, the company started using visual sensors that can detect when wheels begin to flatten–another factor that can cause accidents on the rails.

Lynden Tennison, CIO at Union Pacific, told CIO Journal, that the company can now check 40 million patterns every day and can alert the train operators of any anomaly in a bearing within five minutes. “Our goal was to design a system that requires very little maintenance,” he said.

To do this, Union Pacific worked with Intel (INTC) which addressed some of the unique challenges of designing a wireless sensor network for a rail system (pdf). The blog states that to overcome the battery-life issues, Millennial Net paired its i-Bean wireless technology with “energy harvesting” technology from startup Ferro Solutions. An inductive vibration generates power to send [battery free] at 115 Kbps over a distance of 30 m,” said Tod Riedel, cofounder and vice president of business development at Millennial Net.

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Are you ready for appliances that are smarter than you?

LG Smart Thinq refrigeratorStacey Higginbotham at GigaOM asks “Are you ready for appliances that are smarter than you?” She points out that LG has introduced its first connected appliance, a Smart Thinq refrigerator that knows what’s inside it. The appliance can communicate with your phone. Your kitchen is about to get a similar level of connectivity as your living room.

The Smart Thinq refrigerator got a lot of press at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas as smart appliances were all the rage. The Android-based OS that enabled the fridge to communicate with your smartphone and share information like the contents of the fridge excited the press. The idea, according to the author, was that when someone got home from the grocery store they could choose to tell the fridge what was inside using a touchscreen or they could scan a bar code on their receipt that would contain the information about their purchases.

In this ideal world, the fridge would then be able to suggest recipes for the family based on their weight goals, age, gender, and whatnot. If the consumer selected a fridge-offered recipe the appliance could shoot the recipe to the Smart Thinq oven and it could preheat. All of the connectivity occurs via Wi-Fi and is controlled by the phone and the touchscreen.

The article explains that other features include such as calorie counting and notifications of expiration dates. And if grocery stores take part – then the fridge could show when certain items are out and order them for home delivery.

Is Your Dishwasher Really Yearning for the Internet?

Is Your Dishwasher Really Yearning for the Internet?Is Your Dishwasher Really Yearning for the Internet? A startup called Ube thinks so. The firm is betting that smart devices and smartphone apps will make home automation cheap and easy.

In MIT’s Technology Review article “Is Your Dishwasher Really Yearning for the Internet?” Glen Burchers Ube’s chief marketing officer says that more and more home gadgets will ship with microprocessors, enabling the automation and remote control of everything from your lights to your laundry. Until this is a widespread reality, he’d like to sell you a wall outlet.

The wall outlet includes an ARM processor, runs Google’s Android mobile operating system, and can connect to the Internet. This means anything you plug into it can be controlled via your smartphone, and it will also track how much power your devices are consuming.

According to TR, the startup plans to sell the outlet along with a “smart” dimmer switch and plug for $60 to $70 apiece. The Austin, TX firm also plans to offer a free smartphone app that can control these and other Internet-enabled devices.

The blog reports that the Ube app will access a Wi-Fi network to scan for nearby Internet-enabled devices it can manage and lets you know what it can control. Mr. Burchers says the app can control more than 200 devices, most of which are gaming systems, set-top boxes, and TVs.

Mr. Burchers believes that Ube’s first products are just the beginning. He told TR most new electronics will be able to connect to the Web, and home builders will offer smart dimmers to new home buyers as they do granite countertops.

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Ralph Bach has been in IT long enough to know better and has blogged from his Bach Seat about IT, careers, and anything else that catches his attention since 2005. You can follow him on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. Email the Bach Seat here.

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| September 22, 2012
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SmartPhone Zombie Apocalypse

SmartPhone Zombie ApocalypseIf you have a smartphone, online criminals may soon have your number. Smartphone malware is getting increasingly sophisticated, and MIT‘s Technology Review reports that a security researcher has created software that turns a smartphone into a “zombie” that can be controlled remotely. The blog says Georgia Weidman created the program, which controls a Google (GOOG) Android phone via short message service (SMS) to bring about a smartphone zombie apocalypse.

malicious software on mobile phonesOnce only theoretical, real-world cell-phone viruses are becoming more common. The article reports the most famous was a scam in Russia that tricked users into installing malicious software on Android phones and using the SMS functionality to send messages to a number that charged a premium fee. In late 2010, a Chinese virus for Android devices stole personal data according to the article.

Botnets have become a staple of Internet crime. They can be used to attack other systems, host attack tools, send spam, or just steal data. The blog says this type of attack has been rare with mobile devices, but that seems to be changing. “We have been taking down Internet botnets for years now, but there is not as much understanding [of telecom networking],” Ms. Weidman says. “I definitely see criminals going more and more toward using the telco’s network.”

zombie nodes of a botnetTR explains that Ms. Weidman’s program is one of the first known to turn smartphones into zombie nodes of a botnet. Her attack works like this: After infecting a phone with a rootkit, she uses that phone to send spam text messages, takes part in a denial-of-service, or degrade the communications of the phone—all without the user knowing. The techniques apply to any smartphone, Weidman says.

Today’s smartphones have multiple layers of defense. For one, they can block malicious applications. They also have managed channels, such as the Apple (AAPL) App Store and Google’s Android Marketplace, for applications.

botnet controlAs a result, Weidman says, infecting a smartphone is not easy. “The hurdle with any malware is infecting the phone,” she told Technology Review, noting that the methods used by cybercriminals usually do not work. “More of what you see of malware is people downloading applications for their phone that are infected,” she says.

The problem of cyber-criminals targeting consumers’ phones will only get worse Kevin Mahaffey, chief technology officer of mobile-security startup Lookout told the author. Because the control of phones is so easy to turn into cash via premium text messages, criminals will be drawn to attack the devices.

Lookout logo“I always tend to look at the economics of the problem to ask myself whether it will continue in the future,” the CTO explained. “And because there is an incentive for attackers to compromise mobile phones, and the cost of compromising is not that high, that says it will become more prevalent in the future.”

Using the telecommunications network, rather than the Internet, for botnet control allows attackers to hide their actions from users. When the attacker does it using malicious software, the user has little chance of detecting it, says Weidman.

smartphone botnet zombie“When I infected a phone in my botnet—my lab botnet—with malware, the smartphone would receive a message through SMS and I would check to see if it has botnet instructions in it,” she says. “If it does, it would perform the functionality requests, and then it would swallow the message, so the user does not know that there was a message at all.”

While phones do not have the computing power of more traditional computers, they are hefty enough to handle many of the tasks that cyber-criminals desire, she says. She adds that the sheer number of smartphones means that any botnet could be “a real threat” to create a smartphone zombie apocalypse.

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Ralph Bach has been in IT long enough to know better and has blogged from his Bach Seat about IT, careers, and anything else that catches his attention since 2005. You can follow him on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. Email the Bach Seat here.

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