The CIA Fears the Internet of Things

[InfoSec News <alerts () infosecnews org>]

http://www.defenseone.com/technology/2014/07/cia-fears-internet-things/89660/

By Patrick Tucker
Defense One
July 24, 2014

The major themes defining geo-security for the coming decades were 
explored at a forum on “The Future of Warfare” at the Aspen Security Forum 
on Thursday, moderated by Defense One Executive Editor Kevin Baron.

Dawn Meyerriecks, the deputy director of the Central Intelligence Agency’s 
directorate of science and technology, said today’s concerns about cyber 
war don’t address the looming geo-security threats posed by the Internet 
of Things, the embedding of computers, sensors, and Internet capabilities 
into more and more physical objects.

“Smart refrigerators have been used in distributed denial of service 
attacks,” she said. At least one smart fridge played a role in a massive 
spam attack last year, involving more than 100,000 internet-connected 
devices and more than 750,000 spam emails. She also mentioned “smart 
fluorescent LEDs [that are] are communicating that they need to be 
replaced but are also being hijacked for other things.”

“The merger of physical and virtual is really where it’s at. If we don’t 
grok that then we’ve got huge problems,” she said. Grok, a reference to 
Robert A. Heinlein’s 1961 novel Stranger in a Strange Land, describes the 
telepathic communion of thoughts, feelings, and fears.

[...]

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