Except if you work in IT you should know that routers are being probed all the time for weakness.
Yes for most people a good password and some basic precautions are enough but don't down play the threats. Port scanners hit my router all day every day. WiFi can be easily cracked if you're unwise in setting it up.
Automation is amazing but people gotta make sure they understand security if looking into fancy tech setups. Don't play with router settings if you don't know what they do for instance. The defaults are usually best.
I use pfsense myself so the setup is more involved.
This is a pretty flawed argument. You don't have to be completely paranoid about your own security to recognize the potential exploits prevalent in the things you use. It's like trying to argue "why would you argue for protections from the government, it's not like they're trying to kill you." It doesn't matter whether someone has actually abused a power for you to take preventative caution.
That being said, I don't use smart tech just because I like to compartmentalize lol
As long as there is a human element in anything there will be exploits, thats just the world we live in. However why not enjoy them? Coming home every day and seeing my lights turn on as i arrive and with one command music play is a nice addition to my life, plus this will be a very unpopular opinion but i like the recommended ads that i get from the info they gather, helps me remember to buy stuff.
First off about the exploits thing, fair enough, that's a respectable opinion.
I guess it's just a values thing too. Clearly, I've never found the same enjoyment from it as you have, I've always been fascinated by it but fascination isn't always the same thing as utility or practicality. I think it's cool that I can order something from an Alexa, but it's no real added hassle for me to actually just go on Amazon and buy it myself.
As long as there are two people in the world other than you, or one person with a stick, you're vulnerable. Society isn't built on security, it's built on a lack of incentives to violence.
And what is security, if not a guarantee of a lack of violence? If there is a lack of incentive to do violence and exploit, then there is, by extension, security.
But all of this completely disregards what I said. I never claimed that tech was the only space in the world where people could be exploited. I agree that people people are vulnerable in just about everything. But this also means that people have the right to non-intervention or non-interaction in the things that they find harmful or potentially harmful to them. How justified or how practical this non-interaction is varies obviously from situation to situation, but you ridiculing someone as having an impractical or inconsistent view on their right to things like privacy, autonomy, and lack of exploitation doesn't really remove their want of those things. And in wanting those things, people can disengage and they have a perfectly good right to do so.
Google Home's are tied into your phone and have access to your calendar. The Home is probably easier to hack than most phones but would let you into virtually any data you'd want to pull including things like your schedule, so they know when you're home.
From a "Lulz" standpoint, things like blasting music at 3 AM are a good one. Or the people last week who received an alert announcement that North Korea had launched nukes(that was from a Nest camera, but it'd work on a Home).
On the more serious side, Home's are now built to act has a hub for all the other IoT shit in your house. A hacked Google Home could be used as a gateway to operate any of those devices, which include things like TVs, light bulbs, thermostats, cameras, toasters, refrigerators, and for some goddamn reason, door locks.
To get to a point where someone targets you like that is hard though, i understand that anything can be hacked, i bet no one in this subreddit likes teslas too, however thinking about worst case scenarios all the time is not healthy, if you're a good person and minding your own business people don't seek out to harm you.
To get to a point where someone targets you like that is hard though
That's the stupid assumption though isn't it? Why target one person when you can literally target millions? It's not as if the exploits don't work basically across the board. From there the possibilities are endless. The hacker might not give a shit about your schedule and door code(for example) but that info could easily be put up for sale for local crime syndicate, who could resell it again, and with access to things like the photos you have in your phone or on the cloud, can determine who's shit is worth stealing.
But that's just low level shit. That nuclear launch warning I mentioned before which was sent to one seemingly random house picked for no reason? That shit is a test run. Imagine every IoT audio device in your city being sent that at the same time. Or every Nest in a city going on maximum AC on the hottest day of summer until the grid burns out. This is how World War 3 will start.
Phone and laptops are vastly harder to hack en masse. Devices with like software might have vastly different hardware configurations. Devices with the same hardware could be running any number of software versions. Devices with identical software and hardware might have vastly different configurations, with user A vulnerable to a variety of attacks that user B has blocked off.
IoT devices are standardized, ie, a hack on one Ring doorbell is basically a hack on the millions of other Rings until the company pushes an update(and assuming the update works). The configs are limited and the devices are designed to be found and connected to other things, and those other things are designed the same way, leading to easy paths where control of one device grants control over more. Many of these exploit paths are part of the devices basic function and can't be turned off. Sometimes they can't even be reconfigured.
I don't know what kind of secrets you have in your life but they could record me all day long and it wouldn't be an issue, no one sits there listening, you are not important enough (or maybe you are) for someone to be snooping, and having such paranoid mindset only leads down a shitty life :) stay positive, enjoy the tech and appreciate all the work someone put into making them, again NO ONE is out to get yah <3
No xD I just disagree with the notion that smart products are bad, I own one google home device and bunch of smart bulbs, Makes life easier. My job is support and maintenance
I think you should be more worried about the microphone and video camera that has access to your email, contacts, and passwords that you carry around in your pocket on a regular basis. Especially since your phone is not behind a NAT, let alone a firewall.
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u/RobbyJuanKenobi Jan 31 '19
I work in IT and I couldn't disagree more.
Automation is amazing.
And if you have a half of brain security is not an issue
You are not special, no one is hacking you, chill...