Your network is only as secure as it’s weakest link, IoT devices are a liability unless they are on their own isolated network and who has the time to set that shit up to open their blinds from a phone?
I work in retail, which is the reason why my house is shit.
My entire family, 20+ people, multiple generations, are pretty much all CS/engineers. We all have smart home shit that depends on wifi etc.
Once you see how its all a cash grab, really turns you off.
Home assistant for the win
I’m an IT security administrator and enjoy IoT at home because I have a smartphone pointed at my face right now. I’m already compromised.
I’ve known plenty of security admins who were bad at their jobs.
Cool! Not sure what that has to do with me.
moved landline to Gvoice 15 years ago and set it to dnd. house phone never rings. get a transcript of any voicemail.
I know some software engineers like that. Some of it is knowing that the companies that make iot devices don’t give a crap about security. Some of it is plain ol paranoia. Mechanical door locks can be picked does that mean you invest in guard dogs? Crime is a thing but so is misanthropy. I think we should take reasonable precautions but believe that there are more good ppl than bad.
Mechanical door locks can be picked, but it must be done at the lock in plain view rather than at a distance sitting in a car while you do the majority of the work and then casually walking up and opening the door. Locks are more of an inconvenience than a deterrent, so it should be made as inconvenient as possible. Connecting them to the internet is the exact opposite of that.
But more realistically someone robbing your house is going to ring your doorbell to see if someone is home, then just walk around checking for unlocked windows.
Bear theory.
My house doesn’t need to be impenetrable, it just needs to be more of a hassle to get into than yours.
Not even that. It just needs to look like more of a hassle.
They really just let anyone buy those signs that say you have security cameras or an angry dog.
Someone mentioned to me that those angry dog signs are a liability because if someone gets bit they can say you knew you had angry dog, so it’s best just to have a sign that says dog and doesn’t mention it’s mood
“Dog with sharp teeth”
Might dependsl on your jurisdiction. But I wouldn’t be worried they’d probably need to prove you had a duty of care to them which you acted outside of which resulted in injuries that could have been avoided by you acting with a reasonable level of care.
Also if you did have a duty of care to them and knowingly had a dangerous dog not warning someone of known dangers (the dog) might constitute a break of your duty of care.
Tldr: It depends, you get what you pay for get your advice from actual local lawyers not random people on the street or the internet (like me).
True, but again it’s about making it as inconvenient as possible. Manually locking windows and making sure they are locked is effective. In some places they put security bars on the windows. Tall fences can also create obstacles as well.
You won’t stop everyone that wants to break in, but you can create enough trouble to keep out most people. Making it convenient for yourself by connecting everything to the internet just makes it convenient for everyone else too.
You can’t ever stop someone who really wants to get into your home. The best you can do is make your home look too tedious to bother with.
Or make your neighbor’s home more attractive. Try keeping the neighbor’s house key, neatly labelled & with alarm code, under your own doormat. Just in case.
Yes,but you don’t do yourself any favours by leaving the front door open.
Tall fences are usually privacy fences and they can make it really easy for a thief to spend a ton of time unseen in your backyard.
Usually, but not always. I’m thinking more of the bar fence with spikes at the top.
Is the fence going to have a gate, and is that gate going to be locked? If so, you better put a fence around it to be safe.
locks keep people honest, and make thieves pick a house that’s less of a hassle.
I think CGP Grey has a video about this concept. It’s not so much that a mechanic lock is better or more secure.
It’s more that it takes one person
$xseconds to break into one lock.That’s very different than allowing a million people the opportunity to break your digital lock millions of times.
It’s a different threat model.
An average house lock is pretty easy to pick. An average picker of locks could get through in minutes. Someone who trained for years could get through in a few seconds if they’re lucky. Someone using a pick gun, willing to risk damaging the lock, can often get through in seconds. But, each individual lock is different, so you never know how long it will take to get through. Taking any more than 10 seconds to get through a door looks suspicious, so it’s very risky to try to pick a lock if you’re not willing to take a chance at looking suspicious, even if you’re a master lock picker.
With electronic locks, if there’s an exploit for that lock and the person going up to the lock has access to it, they could get through instantly and not look at all suspicious. If there’s no exploit, the person is out of luck. The person trying to break in also doesn’t have to have any expertise. They just need access to the exploits. Also, because people are constantly trying to find exploits, there’s almost guaranteed to be a time when your lock is vulnerable. Making it worse, with an electronic lock, someone can inspect the lock one time, and then just wait for a vulnerability for that particular lock to be available.
And my smart lock alerts me when someone unlocks it. Sure it could be hacked, but it is more likely that someone will just kick the door open.
Picking locks takes skill, kicking down a door is higher risk of alerting someone or getting caught. Those both deter a lot of would-be criminals.
Whereas a hack creates a situation where criminals are going to target those devices – it’s “low risk”. Any opportunistic asshole with 2 brain cells can download the hack and go around trying doors until it works.
In a meeting with a (business) customer regarding security precautions, my coworker had a great suggestion: we buy a mountain in
SwitcherlandSwitzerland, build a bunker there for the servers and hire a private army for protection. The customer liked the idea…Is Switcherland on the Ethernet continent?
I knew it was a mistake to not to check dow it’s spelled
Dats chrazy
Bahnhof has a data centre in Stockholm like that - lots of ex-military bunkers around.
But if my printer ever laughs at my bad jokes I’m keeping my hammer ready, just in case.
Locks can be picked, but good locks require picking skills far beyond what the average break and entry will have. They can be drilled, but that’s loud and increases the odds of being caught.
A software vulnerability can be triggered silently and will look like you’re an expected guest.
They’ll likely just smash the window in the back yard though so it’s a moot point
actually good mechanical door locks can only be picked by a handful of people in the world with special tools most of whom are locksmiths
And those locks cost hundreds a piece. A “there is a security system here” sign would do more useful work. And a locksmith will tell you that picking is what you try AFTER you just try bypassing the lock entirely. Aka shim the door or break a window. Exactly what a burglar will do if they really wanted in. You do know that your garage door can be disabled with a coathanger threaded inside and grabbing the release hook, right? Or a jack wedged under with a crowbar, right? Or your decorative gnome in the front yard thrown through a window? Locks are a deterrent.
the word “picked” does a lot of heavy lifting here.
Most professional thieves won’t care about damaging your lock. It’s called “breaking” and entering for a reason.
And if your door is super reinforced better hope your wall is too
Yeah but how many people looking for a smash and grab are going to bring tools to cut through a wall instead of just going next door or through the window?
And a properly secured network can’t be compromised by some amateur thief sitting in their car. Point was that foolproof security is a fantasy.
Point is reducing attack surface by not having internet connected lock 🙄
A “hacker” breaking into your house is a fantasy. If some one wants in they are….breaking….into your house. Ie breaking your door or window. Mechanical or not doesn’t make a difference. It’s all security theater. However you can know the status of internet connected locks at least.
I’m not just talking about locks. I’m talking about the concept of IoT itself.
I think the real point is that mechanical locks don’t track when you leave and enter your home like electronic ones do. Not whether they are better or worse than mechanical.
It’s not just poor security that’s easily hackable, it’s mainly the unreliability and frustration of having to continue to work when you get home to fix your dam light switch because it doesn’t work because it got out of sync when the microwave is turned on. No thanks.
Goddamn right.
Actually, I hadn’t thought about the router and I’m panicking now. My router is some MR9600, and the speeds through it are great, but I feel like I over paid for something that I can’t install my own firmware on. I think my pi.hole is the DCHP anyway, and now I’m really thinking I need to find a new router
Have a look at mikrotik devices. OpenWRT images are actually kinda rare for them, but not because they’re locked down (they’re not) but because the included Linux with proprietary userland is very, very, neat: Those things administer like ISP-grade routers (which mikrotik also sells), not servers. No shell access, so if you want to run other shit on there make sure that there’s an OpenWRT image, the hardware is definitely decent and well-priced.
I really like Asus routers with Asus Merlin if you want some extra features but don’t need anything too crazy
You can buy some used mini-PC with reasonable CPU (i3-4150 handles Gigabit QoS with a lot of overhead) and USB-Ethernet connector with drivers supported by OpenWrt (eg. something from Tp-Link). With that and some used AP you’ll have a setup cheaper and better than any “real” router.
I was so confused at first with the mechanical windows… (i thought they where talking about the OS)
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I enjoy messing around with the home automation stuff but I’m using a raspberry pi and have a NAS, so essentially a local cloud. Nothing goes up to AWS or whatever
Am I shady for not wanting Jeff besos watching me take a dump it’s ridiculous how we’ve gotten to the point that just because some people don’t want mega corporations watching them relax in their home they are automatically suspicious of doing shady stuff like imagine if these companies were people would you feel comfortable with someone watching you shop sleep take a crap watch movies fr the only reason we are ok with this stocking is because the stocker is really far away using bugs that follow orders
No, you’re shady for writing a paragraph without finishing a single sentence!
Yep, completely true for me at least. I have a colleague who has everything smart though, so it’s certainly not everyone, but I keep my house intentionally as dumb as possible. The only household thing I have that is “smart” is my robot vacuum, but we hardly ever use it anymore because doing it with a good old fashioned vacuum cleaner is so much quicker.
Edit: I do have a smart tv as well, actually, but with google assistant and the microphone disabled.
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Software developer. The frequency of stupid features that PMs request, followed by our urgency to implement it as fast as possible has opened up so many bugs and issues. Knowing that, why the hell would I want to open up potential failure to things I expect to work 100% of the time, like a toaster?
Software programmer. I have a Google Home running because I’m lazy af and like to be able to verbally turn on/off lights. I also use it to combat ADHD symptoms because saying “set an alarm” is less likely to distract me from what I’m doing than pulling out my phone is.
Smart lights solve a problem. I have LEDs with programmable scenes that I can swap to easily. I don’t have white light constantly on all times of the day.
Even better, have them on a timer and geofence like I do. When dusk falls, the lights turn on. When the last person leaves, all off. At 1am, all turn off except driveway lights. At dawn, all turn off. I never even interact with my lights anymore because they are automatic.
I could, but I don’t operate within a time window. I like having my colored lights on when I’m gaming, but white when I’m working or cleaning, which could be after 5.
I could geofence them, but it’s difficult with a wife when we have different schedules. Don’t wanna be changing each other’s lights. Haha
I was more being rhetorical and speaking to how my lights are set up :)
“Alexa! Switch to lighting configuration ‘McLuvin’”.
Hey Google, it’s sexy time
Indeed. Like what is fridge? Motor with piston in a puddle of oil and a thermostat. Why the fuck it needs any corpo bullshit?
Coward.
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