The commercial excitement over IoT is all about offering 'services' you couldn't offer before. When your house is full of these devices, some people will pay extra for the 'enhanced tier' of service (even if the basic tier is offered for free). In cases where the business model isn't subscription-based, it's either made up by the high retail price of the device, or indirectly monetizing the data collected for 'market research' and the like.
IoT isn't about people hooking up jailbroken Kindles to one-way mirrors to show the weather. It's not about Ardunios and Raspberry Pis being used to collect some data, move some servos, and make a blog post about it. It's about big money to be made by introducing new monetization channels in places there were none before.
I've been saying that there are three "scammy" markets which tend to have a higher ratio of overpriced, scammy products, and they're the following:
* Health
* Education
* Office productivity
And now,
* Home security (New!)
The reason that I think these markets tend to be scammy is because their quality is mostly based on perception. And there's no easy way to drastically improve these, people tend to look for a magic pill. And you're right, security is certainly going to be one of them.
If we really take security seriously then we should be talking about LAN of things. Anything that requires a connection to the internet and that takes firmware upgrades from the manufacturer and hides data from the user/owner is a security threat not a security agent.
We are still living in a corporation centric paradigm and until we start talking about user centric systems any talk about security and privacy is a joke.
I'd be interested if you could break these issues out a bit more :
- connection to the internet; seems to me that this is a trade off, without some sort of network access it's hard to see how many devices can be useful in many applications. But that connection can be constrained.
- firmware upgrades - is this about trust?
- hides data - ok, I get this, but many users are not able to spend time working out what is going on.
I agree that corporations tend to privilege themselves, but of course the world is not just made of users. There are government actors and rogue actors as well, most users can't defend themselves - how should the playing field be organised in your opinion?
The point is that we're all playing the user role much more then the company owner/employee role.
Products and services are developed by companies and if they don't design things thinking about how they as users of those products and services would like to be treated, then everybody would have a worse overall experience.
There are simply some business models that produce far more negative experiences for more people then the actual gains for the owners. Advertising is the first example here..
We're all experiencig life as users and I'm saying that the systems we deign should be user centric so that from one's perspective everything falls into place seamleslly, without fragmentations..
Currently when interracting with technology I'm feeling that it's not designed for me but for the one that built it..
The first two bullet points on your list are very specific to an american perspective. As a dutchman I do not consider these scammy markets whatsoever.
As an Australian, I do agree with you, but only looking at them from what government services are provided. In terms of the industry, I think health/fitness is possibly the largest in terms of misinformation because no one wants to do simple exercise and eat well, everyone is looking for a shortcut to get bigger or smaller.
So I don't think that they're specific to the American perspective in a larger sense, but I do also see where you are coming from. Then again, neither of us are American!
As a Swede, I beg to differ. Both the two bullet points apply to other countries as well, such as Sweden. It's just that it hits you indirectly through taxes, instead of directly by you having to fork out bills from your wallet.
It's also scammy in the way that the current Regional Healthcare drives out fair competition to a large part.
Not that I disagree with you but what does this really have to do with the article?
Is your point that the IoT "killer app" is subscription services? That's more of a way that manufacturers will make money than a "killer app", which is usually defined as a use case so great that it will induce people to buy the product.
Yes, thanks for prompting me to clarify my point. I believe the 'killer app' of IoT isn't a particular kind of product, but rather the fact that the products establish an ongoing relationship between the consumer and the manufacturer where previously one didn't exist.
Today, I buy a fridge or a thermostat or a deadbolt lock and I'm done; I keep the warranty flyer in a box and forget about it until the product breaks. With IoT, everything becomes an ongoing venture; this sounds like an opportunity for the vendor -- but potentially for the customer also.
For example, this trend could counter the race to the bottom that tends to occur with established consumer goods, because a particular brand's ecosystem will have a particular character, and will likely work better with products within the same brand. This is the game that Samsung and LG are playing, and they have the marketshare among a disparate lines of products to get it done. If I'm invested in 'Samsung Home' as opposed to 'LG Home', I'm more likely to buy Samsung instead of LG or Whirlpool or Maytag or Electrolux or any other brand; and maybe all because my phone was a Samsung.
I wondered why Samsung seems to be going hard into not just IoT, but also into cloud (by buying Joyent).
IoT is going to be the new "convergence", isn't it? Technical and business people get really excited, lots of effort is invested, and then average people just shrug, because it turns out that the tech doesn't solve an actual problem they they have.
I'm not so convinced IoT will fizzle with average people. Security and cloud-dependence aside, I can see the value in certain things being connected and remote-manageable: baby monitors, lights, pet feeders, washing machines, coffeemakers, ovens, thermostats; anything where controlling or seeing data from it from a outside the room or outside the house would be genuinely useful to solve particular needs. Some others will be complete gimmicks solving no real need.
And all of this doesn't account for any evolution of appliances along non-IoT spectrums or the introduction of entirely new ones:
- a combined washer/dryer blackbox where dirty clothes go in and clean, dry clothes come out
- an affordable at-home deboning/meatcarving apparatus
- an at-home vegetable-growing planter
- a 'smart' pan that controls the cooking temperature and done-ness
Some of these concepts are being trialed right now, or exist at industrial scales and have yet to be scaled down. A lot of what's being talked about assumes that were it not for them being 'smart', appliances will look exactly the same in 10-20 years. I don't believe this to be true. Nothing too futuristic, but new gizmos will exist, solving real (if niche) needs, some of which benefit more from data sharing than others.
Good points, particularly about industrial uses (I've seen impressive things for agriculture, and can see the use cases in institutions and other large buildings like hotels).
I guess that I look at the current consumer products, and they seem like isolated gimmicks. Aside from the quality of the code on the devices, there needs to be at least some kind of secure message broker and associated apps, otherwise every individual device is going want separate control apps and be spamming you.
I'm currently using a personal Slack account to manage all the notifications from cloud services etc. but it feels like a hack - a smart home with a bunch of devices probably needs a super user-friendly common interface.
> I can see the value in certain things being connected and remote-manageable: ... pet feeders ... coffeemakers ...
For what possible use cases could these items benefit from connectivity? This sounds like all the IoT hype I have been hearing for the past couple years. Let's connect everything! Even if the marginal benefit is less than the costs!
> - a combined washer/dryer blackbox where dirty clothes go in and clean, dry clothes come out
These exist and seem to be the standard laundry device in Japan from my (limited) experience. Any time I've used them my clothes come out quite damp, and an air drying step is required.
regarding the smart pan, if you haven't heard about it yet, check out sous vide cooking technique (there are home level devices on the market right now for it), it's essentially what you want, just it's not done in a pan (you need a dumb pan to do the finishing, but it's a quick step, not very error prone)
I recently looked at the landscape of smart door locks, and came to the same conclusion as @Animats did in his comment. Actually, I would rephrase it to say _all_ smart door locks suck. All I really want right now is an RFID/NFC deadbolt, purely for convenience. Seems simple enough, and yet nothing secure exists.
So I'm now set on trying to build my own lock. I'm thinking of just getting a really nice, mechanical deadbolt, and then building something similar in design to Lockitron, where it just sits on top of the deadbolt, augmenting it with digital authentication. For the keycards I plan to combine a low power MCU with NFC and Ed25519 cryptography for authentication. I found a variation of the MSP430 chips with built-in NFC capability which are designed to run battery-less (they harvest energy from the NFC signal). My rough calculations suggest that they'll be able to soak up enough power to do an Ed25519 signature in 0.25 seconds; fast enough for me. I'll just have the lock send a random challenge to the keycard, it responds with a signature of the challenge, and then the lock can verify the signature and confirm that the card is legit. It should be simple enough to mold the MSP430 and supporting electronics into a thin 1" diameter disc which I can hook to my keychain or put in my wallet. Awesome! The lock itself is just another MCU with NFC capabilities, battery, and motor.
That setup satisfies my desire for a convenient, digital lock, while maintaining real security (Ed25519 with real random challenges, versus existing RFID solutions which use 48-bit keys, 3DES, suffer replay attacks, etc). I'm surprised these things don't already exist. I only had to spend an hour to find the MSP430 chip variation and sketch out this system...
We previously sold Lockitron units in the form you describe as a kit on Adafruit and Sparkfun. Send me an email I'll get you set up.
As for finding a secure NFC lock - I agree, it's slim pickings. The industry moved toward bluetooth in part because it lets you do random challenges defined by (your) software rather than (their) hardware.
What benefit do you hope to get from your smart lock? I stayed at an Airbnb with a simple electronic combo lock.
Plus: no key to pass me
Plus: can change code for each new guest
It's not a smartlock tho but maybe I don't understand what a smartlock is. A friend as an internet connected lock
Plus: can open remotely (package delivery guy calls. From phone friend remotely let's him into garage
Plus: can set time based codes (code only works on a particular day/time range)
Minus: it's on the internet and controlled through a third party service
What will yours do? I'd love one that's online somehow but secure
I'm only going to start with electronic keycard access. For me, being able to replace big, sharp keys with small, smooth cards/discs of plastic is a big win. No fiddling with my keychain, just walk up to the door, press my wallet/keychain/pocket to the door and tap. I want that convenience, without having to sacrifice security (which is the case with all such consumer locks I found).
Calling that a smart lock is a bit of a stretch. Keycard access is old school, but was only used in commercial settings until recently. It's just that the consumer market has dubbed anything that isn't a plain mechanical lock a "smart" lock when applied to people's homes.
Internet connectivity would be something I add later. I'm not as motivated to put the device online, as the benefits as you listed them are a bit fringe for me. Assuming I complete this project it will certainly get open sourced, so perhaps other users will motivate the addition of such features.
I'm not really sure why you need an electronic lock on an airbnb, you're either there to flip the place or you have an onsite person to flip the place, well in large numbers of airbnbs. The ones I can think of that don't need it wouldn't have internet generally. Interested in what you see as the benefit over one of those punch code locks that hold the keys that are like $14 on amazon or a schlage deadbolt for $150.
The benefit to a code lock for me over a box with a code that holds the keys is there's no key to lose nor any key to forget to return. I don't even have to carry the key when I go out. One less (three less?) things to worry about. I actually locked myself out of the last AirBnb I was at. I forgot the key and while that meant I didn't lock the door to the apartment there was also an automated door to the building. Going out it auto-opens, going in it requires a key. I just sat in front of the building for 30 minutes until someone else opened the door.
I've stayed at about 15 AirBnBs, most of them I didn't have to meet the owner. But, also most of them used a lock box with a code instead of just a door code lock.
Looking at the statistics, are a significant number of break in's happening via lock hacking or via the good old fashioned kicking in the front door in your neighborhood? We have had break in's in our neighborhood and lots of conversations with the police. The former is unheard of and the later is the common practice. One thing that really surprised me was that you would think that burglars would go through a window if a door is difficult to penetrate, but once again in my neighborhood that is a rare occurrence even with a large number of homes with easy to get at windows. My point is that this is not likely to be an attack vector unless the other mechanisms are more difficult at the majority of the houses in your neighborhood, or you truly have significantly more expensive items than your neighbors (and it is obvious that you have these items).
Fancy technology defeated with a rock, or more likely a crowbar.
Also keep in mind, the vast majority of break ins are over in 5 minutes or so. It's literally just grab anything you can easily carry that's valuable and easy to see. So your big screen television is safe. Your laptop on the coffee table isn't. The laptop in the coffee table? Shrug.
Using public key crypto for this seems like overkill. If you're willing to use symmetric crypto, a DESFire EV1 card is probably the way to go, and you can get those off the shelf for a dollar or two. Or, if you want public-key signatures, Yubikey devices can do it.
I'm curious, though: why a gadget that fits on the knob? You can get off-the-shelf electric strikes and off-the-shelf electric fail-secure locks in AC and DC variants quite easily.
Public key crypto is exactly what should be used in this application.
Specifically, symmetric crypto would require exchange of secret material between the keycard and the lock at least once. Whether the lock is telling the keycard what secret to use, or the keycard tells the lock what secret it's using. Both scenarios introduce vulnerabilities if someone is able to listen in on that exchange, and one of those scenarios means the keying material in the keycard needs to be dynamic, which introduces problems.
Public key crypto on the other hand is dead simple, hard to get wrong, and a perfect analogy for this application. To enable a keycard you just have the lock read its public key. To auth, you just verify a signature. No secret material is ever exchanged which means no MITM and the keycards remain static devices which means it's easier to make them unclonable.
RE: DESFire EV1. I don't trust MIFARE. Old habits die hard, and MIFARE has very bad habits. Plus all the above.
> No secret material is ever exchanged which means no MITM
That's a bit of a stretch. A MITM could replace the public key that gets transferred. Admittedly, making it look like enrollment worked is awkward, but there is certainly no cryptographic prevention of a MITM.
I should also point out that, even if you choose to use public key crypto, using digital signatures in particular is not necessarily the right choice. The property you want is authentication, not necessarily a non-repudiable signature. For example, the private key holder could authenticate by decrypting an encrypted challenge or completing a DH exchange.
If you're using Curve25519, doing the DH operation is a bit cheaper and less fiddly than running Ed25519, which is a nice benefit. If you're using P-256, it's a much bigger deal: ECDH on P-256 is much safer than using ECDSA, especially on a limited device, as an ECDSA signature using a poor RNG can negate the security of the entire system.
There are workarounds (e.g. the key is also the dongle, like with many cars) but for the sake of this argument, yes, you'd need to carry both.
The car analogy is a good one, actually, because keyless entry has become commonplace in that arena. It's less secure, but so darned convenient. These days, it has become nearly impossible to get a mid-tier, or better, automobile without keyless entry; though it won't happen as quickly, we can expect the same trend with our home door locks. After that, we'll be replacing our locks every 4-6 years, or at around 150,000 miles. Yey, more stuff to go obsolete and throw away!
Generally speaking, the privacy and security concerns that industry continues to ignore are turning me into a Luddite, so I won't be in line for an off-the-shelf IoT device anytime soon, if ever.
The whole unit is just a motor that actuates an existing deadbolt's thumbturn on the opposite side of the door (i.e. not accessible from the outside world). So failing open/closed is a question for the existing deadbolt, not this device.
Most of the "smart" door locks suck as locks.[1] Most are physically too weak. Most need regular battery replacement, although a few generate power from turning the handle.
If you want any real door security, you have to go to steel doors and frames, and multipoint locks. You can get door/frame/lock systems which look normal and operate like a regular door, but bolts go out the top, bottom, and sides into the frame, like a vault door.
As an addition to your point, it's always worth noting there is no such thing as perfect security (at least not in any useful way). As soon as you make your door much more hardened, there are other points of entry that will be used instead. It does you little good to transform your door into a foot thick slab of concrete if your window is still just a couple panes of glass, or someone can just take a sledgehammer to your wall next to the door and it's just a few sheets of plywood and some 2x4's.
Passive security measures buy you time, which in turn makes you a less lucrative target by requiring more effort and making it more likely someone will notice and intervention will arrive before the intruder has completed their goal. This applies equally as well to network security, and usually this comes up here because of analogies in discussions regarding network security, but it applies just the same no matter which direction you approach it from.
What this means in context is that it's often better to step back and look at what your real goal is. It's entirely possible a sign stating "guard dog on premises" (whether you have one or not) will prevent a lot more break-ins than a better padlock. On the other hand, if the convenience is what you are after, then you have a different set of criteria to consider.
Some of the most secure residences are in cheaper public housing. Reinforced concrete walls, metal doors, metal doorframes. Here's a police SWAT team banging away with a battering ram for 12 minutes on an apartment door.[1]
> As soon as you make your door much more hardened, there are other points of entry that will be used instead. It does you little good to transform your door into a foot thick slab of concrete if your window is still just a couple panes of glass, or someone can just take a sledgehammer to your wall next to the door and it's just a few sheets of plywood and some 2x4's.
Well sure, but like in all security it's about adjusting the attacker's effort/reward ratio. As I recall [citation needed], most burglaries are less than a few minutes, in-and-out affairs. Make it harder than that, and you can deter the low-effort attackers.
> Well sure, but like in all security it's about adjusting the attacker's effort/reward ratio.
That's exactly right (and a large part of my point). But if you have a fairly large unsecured window easily visible and a very secure door, there's a good chance that might just get smashed in and people will run in and grab a few high value items before running away. This probably isn't as crazy as it sounds to some, as I heard from a police officer not too long ago that in some cases cars just drive up to a property, someone jumps out and knocks to see if someone is home, and then they just kick the front door in, and run in and grab a few items. A more secure door will prevent that exact scenario, but if they can tell the door is secure, what's to prevent them from throwing something through the window? They are already expecting a loud noise and possibly being noticed, glass breaking doesn't seem like it would deter them (other houses may look easier, but if you look more appealing for some other reason, that may be all that matters in this case).
What I really wanted to point out is that what's really protecting you in most cases is the perception that it's hard to break in, and while reinforcing your door may meet that criteria in your eyes, those that break into houses may have long ago dropped the idea that the door is the only, main, or even best way to break into a house.
Exactly. Your lock system is only as good as the door frame and hinges around it. You can double dead-bolt something and throw a security chain on it too, but if it's in a rotten wood frame, one stiff kick is all it takes, locks be damned.
Frankly, I don't understand your comparison. A "smart" door lock isn't trying to make your door harder, it's trying to make it more convenient to operate than your regular lock.
IoT finding its footing in augmenting other systems rather than revolutionizing them
This is key. All the companies that are trying to start from scratch and build something big are failing or are hitting huge roadblocks due to high learning curves. On the other hand, those that are starting with simple, one-feature, even buttonless devices (philips hue, chromecast, echo) are the ones that are staying afloat.
I'm in this niche, and have been hit hard by this reality. IoT is definitely coming, but right now it is SO young, immature and fragmented, that it takes a pretty skilled person to use it in any meaningful way.
People need to be educated, and the best (read: only) way to do that is to introduce them to IoT one piece at a time. And these pieces have to be reliable and consistent. Until then, the switch on the wall has nothing to worry about.
Adding more insecure devices to protect your home makes no sense. Whatever happened to the idea that fewer "moving parts" meant less likelihood of failure?
The selling point is that you can monitor all this stuff remotely on your phone, but really, what can you do about it? I don't see how this surpasses the (very expensive) services like Brink's and ADT who will contact law enforcement for you.
And yes, I've seen the ad where the guy is at the store trying to figure out what to buy and can look in his fridge from his phone. Whatever happened to making a grocery list before you leave?
To play devil's advocate, what ever happened to making a mix tape from songs on the radio to play in your large battery powered Walkman on the go?
"Why can't we just do it the old way" isn't the best argument for halting attempts at innovation. Before we can have the IoT we see in movies, we have to have gradual iterative progress in the way we think of/use the tech.
"Making a mix tape from songs on the radio to play in your large battery powered Walkman on the go?" was never a design principle, and "why can't we just do it the old way" is not the argument being made above.
The last line of the post I commented on: Whatever happened to making a grocery list before you leave?
Which summarizes to: Why can't we just do it the old way
To which I responded. Again, summary: it's silly to complain about new things being different than the things that came before them, and the only way to make the new stuff great is to make a bunch of new stuff and see what sticks.
To stretch the "whatever happened to good old days things mentality" a little bit further (in the pure devil's advocate spirit): whatever happened to preparing a meal for oneself the way you see a person is doing in this video [1].
I mean, IoT will have a great potential to provide meaningful services with a great deal of convenience only if the things become as inter-operable as plug-pins and sockets.
> Whatever happened to making a grocery list before you leave?
What happened is "not having to". Maybe you like walking to the bus stop and looking at the board to see when the next bus is coming. Maybe you've never gone to the store, seen something that you've forgotten if you have, and then wondered if you should get it because you just remembered a recipe that needs it. Maybe you've never wondered if your stove is off or if you set the thermostat off before you went on vacation.
It's not about being careful. It's about not having to be careful. Life's great, and now we're going to make it effortless. And like everything else, the last 20% is going to cost as much as the first 80%. And maybe it won't be worth it for people like you but when it's finally made in a safe way, it's going to be great for the rest of us.
> I don't see how this surpasses the (very expensive) services like Brink's and ADT who will contact law enforcement for you.
By not being very expensive? I mean, you don't necessarily expect a cheap solution with electronic gadgets to be of better quality than an expensive solution with large quantities of human labor; the point is that a lot more of us can afford the cheap solution.
Honestly I think the camera in the fridge is a great idea.
Who hasn't forgotten to check if they have something? Who hasn't been near the market by chance and decided to pickup something and didn't do a full list before hand?
It is something that can be useful, adds a pretty small amount of cost to an appliance like that, and doesn't get in the way of someone that doesn't want to use the feature.
It's a fantastic IoT opportunity, because if it breaks or doesn't work, the fridge still works fine without it.
to be fair home security systems have been using the same assumptions many years before IoT became a thing. most of them rely on cellular (can be jammed), or phone line (can but cut) or power (can be shut off).
I don't know about most countries, but in my country higher end security systems include backup batteries, a 'continuous monitoring' connection where a monitoring centre can detect the line being cut (e.g. in my country, 'BT Redcare' [1]), and some also include a GSM backup connection. So even if you cut the power and phone lines, the alarm monitoring centre can notice it's happened.
Of course, you can buy cheaper alarm systems that don't have these features, but they're certainly not uncommon. Of course, no amount of technology can fix the fact that when the alarm triggers, the response companies often respond slowly (or not at all) making it unlikely any criminals will be caught in the act.
In my country the line detection doesn't exist but alarms do have backup batteries. I have known cases in my area of houses that got broken into with the use of a GSM jammer. Especially if a household relies on broadband telephony, knocking out the land line is a matter of turning the power off.
I would actually love a freezer inventory system, but it would have to cope with "lump of leftover beef wrapped in foil" and "tupperware box of stew" items.
While his thesis for things that are related to home security in the face of an adversary are correct, there are a lot more cases that aren't so dire.
Gee, someone is banging on my door at 3AM in the morning. I'd really like to see who it is WITHOUT being directly behind the door. Especially since it's most likely to be a neighbor or the police and greeting them with a shotgun is not likely to result in a positive outcome. A cam on my door that I can see from my phone would be kinda useful.
My water heater, washer, shower, etc. just broke. I'd really like to get continuous alerts on my phone that there is water filling up my house.
There are lots of things like this. They're grubby and mucky and an opportunity, but they are not high volume and they require more than 3 guys and a dog and some software.
To further your point, I live in a high-crime urban area in an apartment complex that gets broken into weekly by folks stealing packages and prowling cars. My apartment used to have no security, and it would have stayed there if I hadn't gotten into the open source Python 3 home automation engine https://home-assistant.io. I got it up on a Raspberry Pi and fiddled with it for lots of things. Now, if my door opens or motion is detected and the alarm is armed:
* My stereo gets turned on by an IR LED
* A scary mp3 I threw together with dogs barking, sirens blaring, and monsters growling starts playing loudly
* My camera starts taking snapshots and saving them locally and emailing them to me
* All the lights in my apt. start blinking on and off
If I'm home, this will wake me up if my door gets compromised, and possibly scare off the perp. If I'm not home I will almost certainly get the alert (services are up 99% of the time), and I feel relatively confident that it will scare off a low-level property thief.
If professionals show up with SDR to jam my sensors, yeah they'll get in...I agree. But IoT home security is still good because some security is better than none, and there's no way I would have any security at all without it.
Light switches and door sensor are zwave; jammable. However I could relatively easily rig up my own SDR receiver and detect jamming as a backup trigger.
What most people actually need is local in house system. They do not need leaches that suck on their data and they do not need products that stop to work in few years because company producing them and providing a "service" looses the interest.
IoT will explode when 1) open hardware gains unprecedented trust between the user and their hardware, 2) users begin to prefer open source software because that's just how the most secure and user-first software is maintained, and 3) TBD open hosting.
1 + 2 = "my bulb is an open spec made by factory X running on transparent software maintained by people who care"
3 = "and I host it myself on Y"
3 is the missing link, and it's yesterday's self-hosting that hasn't made it to it's next incarnation. When we'd self-host our web site, we owned the box, owned the set-up and felt absolutely in control of the system. It may not have been as reliable or fast as a hosting service, but there is comfort in full ownership and full control. To their own detriment the shared hosting industry went to shit when they settled for their shady marketing eco-system (paid reviews, not unlimited unlimited quotas, cheap bad service). No one trusts shared hosting now, and so Squarespace and the like have gained popularity, but that's a fully corporate owned opaque service.
The closest to 3 we have now is AWS and Google Cloud and the like, but they are not made for normal users. Dropbox would have been a good candidate but they lose credibility with every word they speak (damage control clearly centered on themselves, ignoring customer complaints).
3 could be 1) a new self-hosting local box that has it's own app or something that's fully contained and in your house. 2) A cloud provider that has managed to detach their corporate interests from their shared infrastructure (like amazon and google have towards developers). Consumers don't want their IoT console cluttered with ads or "recommended items for you" and the last thing consumers want is for Google to mine their personal IoT information. Or 3) a standardized open source cloud platform where users can take their data from one provider to another while enjoying full ownership (local backups), privacy (full encryption), and portability (zero lock-down).
3 is the open-source http://home-assistant.io engine hosted on a local Raspberry Pi and accessed remotely through a DD-WRT OpenVPN. It's here now, and it's amazing.
Exactly. When this (and the like) goes mainstream, and I can buy standard-based hardware, IoT will explode. Consumers do not trust corporations, and will not let them in their home. (This might sound counter intuitive because corporations are all over our homes, but consumers don't want that, and IoT is extremely personal -- it's the home.)
My prediction is that 3 will not happen, and what happens in its place is going to perpetuate the tech giant oligopoly. With the tech giants getting into the business of collecting any remaining missing data points using IoT, it is only a matter of time before most of us are inside houses which are periodically sending data to servers at Amazon, Google et. al.
Their marketing might of course is hard to match. But they are also more likely to know more about your present needs with the trove of data at their disposal. Which cloud provider is going to match that?
Respected experts like Andrew Ng talk about data being a 'defensible barrier'[1] . Under this euphemism lies practices such as 'creating products which do not produce revenue but are intended for data collection'. Yes, folks at HN have known about these things for a long time, but my point is the stamp of endorsement for these disturbing practices from people who are regarded as authority figures, and the general absence of debate around these practices.
No one seems to give a shit about how much information their PC is sending to Apple or Microsoft or the NSA. Generally its only tech savvy people that know about open source.
I agree that the security of IOT devices is petty terrible in its current state.
However the author seems to make a mistake in generalizing that "It doesn’t take a professional to realize his particular house of cards [home security system] is about as fragile as they come."
The average person does not understand the danger of IOT, and this is where the most damage will come from.
Physical security doesn't have the same parameters as digital security though. The pool of attackers on the internet is much larger and more sophisticated than those looking to break into the average person's home.
To put it in more concrete terms. The door to my home has 2 deadbolt locks. I would be highly surprised to learn that either can't be picked in a short period of time by someone with enough skill. That said the probability of that happening to my door is relatively low. The same level of exploitability in a web browser though is much more likely to be a problem.
In short the pools of likely attackers for my home is quite different from the pool of attackers for my digital presence. The primary concern I have with IoT is it's potential to expand the pool of attackers for my home.
To be sure, it depends on the concept being communicated to the average person at all. Average people understand epidemics and by extension the Morris Worm-like danger expanded IoT (in its current state) brings.
my guess is that companies are pushing this (rather than customer pull) because:
1) product differentiation, more vague tick boxes on the product comparison chart that your competitors don't have.
2) vendor lockin/ecosystem lockin. If the devices are not going straight to a remote server you'll need a "hub". your brandA lightbulbs will only talk to a brandA house hub which is incompatible with brandB security locks.
3) product churn. (did you really really need to replace your ok tv with one that does 3d? lots of people did).
4) clip the ticket. build a platform that involves transactions and take a cut.
5) data. paraphrasing: if you aren't paying for it, you aren't the customer you're the product.
none of these really sound like a utopia for the average person.
There's also the "Star Trek factor" (I just made us this term). Tech people grow up watching or reading science fiction and then try to build the stuff for real, because it would be cool.
We'll have to see if ordinary people find it useful.
I have had a HAI Omni Pro in my house for nearly a decade, it is a UL listed Fire/Burglary and automation system. It has never faulted or rebooted except when I needed to change its backup battery. There are Omni's running that where made in the 80's.
It has a Ethernet port and a documented TCP protocol that uses 256 AES. I have an iOS app that talks to it directly, which means no lag in controlling it.
Beyond Security and Fire, it controls my lights, HVAC, garage doors, sprinklers.
It is one of the most reliable computing systems I have used. The recent IoT stuff is a joke compared to my Omni, unfortunately I think HAI got left behind and ended up selling out to Leviton and there seems to be little progress since then.
IoT reminds me of the fiber optics craze of the late 90s. No one knew what the killer application for fiber was back then but every company was in it. Eerily similar to whats going on now with IoT.
I think the article does a decent job of highlighting some of (what I hear as) the primary concerns surrounding IoT, namely:
1. WiFi needs to always work
2. Internet connection needs to always work
3. Power needs to always work
4. Stability of software and firmware
5. Trustworthiness of software and firmware (including data leakage, privacy, etc)
Simultaneously, though it rightly points out that IoT is still very much in its infancy, I think it misses a very important observation: there will absolutely come a day when IoT is unavoidable. Not as in you can't avoid encountering it, but as in you can't avoid owning it. There will, (I think anyways) without a doubt, be a day when devices that the average Western consumer considers necessary for everyday life -- things like refrigerators, electric meters, thermostats, and so on -- are effectively impossible to buy "dumb". Every analysis and meta-analysis of IoT that I've seen has been incredibly bullish on it, and I think that's an indication of how much economic incentive there is for it. Given that, I'd say automobile ECIs are the proof in the pudding for the assertion that IoT will be unavoidably ubiquitous. As an experiment, try to find a new car that you can personally can actually buy, that doesn't have a computer in it. As the median Western consumer, that's not possible. So I'm pretty convinced that for IoT, non-participation will not remain an option.
So then the question is, what do we do about those 5 issues? I tend to look at stuff like this from an economic perspective; clearly device producers haven't seen enough market pressure to give a shit about any of them. Right now, the only pressure device creators are demonstrating is a profound push to get something, anything, to market. It really is an internet of shit.
That being said, even the bare minimum is really hard here. You're talking about a system architecture that our existing infrastructure simply isn't cut out to handle. Think about the challenges involved in deploying a reliable authentication system to a web-scale application, and now imagine doing it in a way that can't necessarily rely upon a central server. It's far easier to just "punt" on the second half of that, assume the traditional web paradigm (trusted third party server), and call it a day. And make no mistake, for a commercial device, authentication is absolutely required, even for home WiFi network: not everyone wants every person in their house to control, for example, their locks. Or, alternatively, imagine an AirBNB host being forced to give their guests unfettered access to their IoT vibrator (yes, they exist). These edge cases are everywhere, and they make authentication of some sort or another an absolute requirement.
My hope is that someone (and by someone, in all honesty I'm talking about my own project [1]) can come along and say to device producers:
1. I understand how hard it is for you to make any IoT device.
2. I'm going to make it substantially cheaper for you to do that, but...
3. The privacy and security I've baked into my system is inseparable from your economic benefit as a device producer.
The idea is to evolve that into:
4. You cannot be competitive in the IoT marketplace without privacy and security.
At this point, with how completely and totally horrendous the industry has been in these areas so far, I think that's the only viable way we can achieve those goals without a tremendous amount of growing pains.
[1] The project is called Hypergolix, and at this point it's basically "Dropbox for Python objects, geared towards IoT, with an emphasis on social, and secured via end-to-end encryption". We're in the process of getting a private alpha shippable, to be followed soon by a public alpha. It all works, and it's all open source, but there's some necessary stuff we need to iron out in the coming weeks. Our outdated landing page is https://hypergolix.com, but a better preview of the developer experience is on our very incomplete docs page: http://pyhgx.readthedocs.io/en/latest/index.html . The whole project is backed by a crypto protocol known as Golix: https://github.com/Muterra/doc-golix
> There will... be a day when devices [are] necessary for everyday life... are effectively impossible to buy "dumb".
> As an experiment, try to find a new car that you can personally can actually buy, that doesn't have a computer in it.
The reason I'm convinced this is the case is simply economics. Solid-state electronic controls are very often simpler, cheaper, and more reliable than mechanical ones. When it comes to, for example, thermostat in your refrigerator, on your hot water heater, etc, the reason the economics have, thus far, worked out in favor of the mechanical controls it that the external costs associated with solid state electronics -- the software development, the upkeep, the initial electrical design, etc -- have been too high to justify them (in many cases). But as those external costs decrease, which they (through maturation of the IoT field) inevitably will, the solid-state electronics will be increasingly economically competitive, until eventually to have competitive margins as a device manufacturer, you have to go the connected route. When I say "impossible to buy dumb", I'm not suggesting that every refrigerator is going to have a Google calendar on it or something, I'm talking about all of the little things you take for granted. Don't underestimate the banality of automation.
Cars are a particularly apt example because the exact same thing happened to the automotive industry with the advent of the ECU. The added technical complexity of their computer control was initially only economically justifiable in performance vehicles. As time went on, and ECUs progressed and matured, they became cheaper and cheaper, until even the cheapest new cars were forced to incorporate them to be competitive in the market.
This was interesting look at home IoT is used in home security today and it's current downfalls. However, the items that seem IoT specific are ones that are issues in implementation, not application.
To frame what I mean when I say "IoT specific", I'm pointing out that many of the examples that he highlights are also the downfall of traditional security systems as well. If you have remote monitoring, and you internet/telephone line goes down, IoT or not, you've lost the service end of discussion.
It doesn’t take a professional to realize his particular
house of cards is about as fragile as they come. It is built
on the assumption that one’s WiFi will always work, their
internet connection will always be up, power will always be
on, and every piece of software and firmware is stable and
trustworthy."
Power loss on traditional security, wifi loss on traditional security, hard wire cut on traditional security, all of these will take their toll as well, not just on an IoT system.
Onto the IoT specific related items. The implementation issues that he highlights; having to have your app open to record footage. Your cellphone being at the bottom of you bag and you can't reach it. These are all problems that can happen already. If you can't reach your phone when the security company calls you to notify of a break in, this is the same problem.
I understand why there is a lot of distaste for IoT, and all the security pitfalls that happen. However this is not an inherent issue to the concept, rather is a breakdown of implementation of security protocols that are not being followed and a lack of learning from traditional systems that isn't being applied.
After thinking about this for a while there are ways to bolster an IoT security or monitoring system:
> Power / connection required for signaling. So rather than waiting for a system to signal something is wrong, wait for a heartbeat to die.
> Battery back up: Pretty obvious. You should have a way to at least keep your systems for a period while you get power restored
> Multiple links to a central service. WiFi and Cellular, monitor for connections going down and built in trouble shooting to notify the user if there is one or the other
> Centralized data center for always on recording, pay an additional $10/mo for the ability to store your data elsewhere or offer local 24 hour recordings in the security base station in your home like many dash cams have now.
As for security concerns I look at it this way. Remote connections are something we've got down pat, assuming everyone follows it. Blaming IoT on being inherently insecure is like blaming the database password leaks on mysql rather than an open port and plain text user name / passwords.
I think IoT security has a place and purpose that offers benefits over a traditional system, we're just waiting for the right implementation.
We could make useful devices right now, there's just more money to be made without it.
A) Use existing open protocols: WTF do I need an app to get alerts. Doesn't email still work fine?
B) No cloud connectivity: No, camera, You don't need to store everything on the internet. My NAS can store it just fine. Or my backup usb drive, or whatever. If you want that as an option, sure, but quit trying to pretend that it's the only way this can be done. Same with you fridge. You don't need to store that grocery list online, it can just be emailed directly to me, TYVM.
C) Manual overrides: If my door won't unlock because servers are down, give me a physical key as well. I've read some companies faq's saying that if the internet is out, or their servers are down, you'll just have to call their customer service. No no no no no. Give me a key override. I'm not going to stand outside my own house while you try to get your servers going again. And what if your company goes under?
D) Open Source: If a bug comes out that renders my door-lock unusable, I want to know that I can patch it. We know the manufacturer sure isn't, using history as a guide. Why would you buy next years model if this years model didn't have security flaws?
Building a robust system isn't hard, it's just not profitable. All of these failure-points aren't there because we can't solve the problem, they exist because they are more profitable to leave unsolved.
I agree that a robust system isn't hard. I don't agree that it's not profitable. If you don't make an app, that cuts down on your bottom line, not paying to make the app or the programmers to maintain it. From there you can just tack on additional services easily. Local storage for everything as they do now with security. Just give the users a micro SD card slot, say you can record everything right here. Charge them for a cloud connection / storage. Charge them for remote monitoring.
Agree with manual overrides there is no reason to not have a key. I'm surprised you've read about that because that's against regulation in commercial security. If power goes down there should be a battery backup to power it and keep the key card / door security working OR it turns off and you can't lock your doors. Better to keep unlocked than have someone burn alive inside.
The beauty of IoT is how it can be easily expanded and connected should you choose to. There is nothing preventing companies from implementing the same idea to the payment system. Charge enough for securing those IoT devices once they reach out into the world and I think you can have a real system on your hands.
I'm open to your opinion on that, but if that's true why is it not being done? There's a lot of companies making IoT stuff, but it's really hard to find any of them making robust systems. The lack of profitability is the only way I can reconcile that. If you have another idea, let me know.
> I'm surprised you've read about that because that's against regulation in commercial security
Looking now, I see a lot of companies switching to local bluetooth connections. That's definitely an improvement to the last time I looked (years ago).
> The beauty of IoT is how it can be easily expanded and connected should you choose to.
I agree! but not if we keep pushing closed-off systems and protocols
I guess my opinion comes from the idea that there hasn't been a product or company that exemplifies a basic/robust system as we have both described. Everything has had the flashy app, or cloud connectivity, which in itself is a cost. If you're able to build a basic system completely contained, mark that up, you have just a regular hardware product, doesn't need to be IoT. Now, if you want remote monitoring, or backup systems you can start charging for that. Which, I might add, traditional security companies already do. And what many IoT companies seem to consider "essentials" rather than "extras". I think once the idea is shifted from user base / experience towards a goal to hit the actual benefits (ease of expansion / cheap data monitoring ) then we'll start to see IoT really explode.
> why is it not being done? There's a lot of companies making IoT stuff, but it's really hard to find any of them making robust systems. The lack of profitability is the only way I can reconcile that.
Two reasons.
1. Time to market. Reliability and security are slightly expensive in money but very expensive in calendar time (throwing bodies at the problem, substituting money for time, is a somewhat effective way to get features and marketing, but not an effective way to get security).
2. Power. Remember that the entire edifice of modern economics is a leaky abstraction implemented on top of a killer ape. Power is a stronger motive than money.
IoT isn't about people hooking up jailbroken Kindles to one-way mirrors to show the weather. It's not about Ardunios and Raspberry Pis being used to collect some data, move some servos, and make a blog post about it. It's about big money to be made by introducing new monetization channels in places there were none before.