Today’s connectivity is absolutely amazing, the ease with which we can access all kinds of information and data that seems so natural to younger generations still boggles my mind (having slogged away in libraries for hours and days myself…). Yet the Dark Side of Innovation is looming…. Too often we get so excited about the possibilities of innovation that we leave the questions about negative impact to one side for too long. For me this article is a wake-up call.
Tobias Zillner and Sebastian Strobl from ‘Cognosec’ have discovered some critical security flaws in ZigBee that could allow hackers to compromise ZigBee networks and take over control of all connected devices on a network, including door locks, alarm system and even controlling your light bulbs.
The worse part pointed out by the researcher is that there is nothing users could do to make their smart devices more secure, and since the flaw affects a broad range of devices, it’s quite unclear how quickly vendors will come up with a fix.