Intel, Cisco and co reveal PLANS to keep tabs on WORLD'S MACHINES GE, Intel, Cisco, and Verizon have announced a big data deal to connect Predix — GE’s software platform — to machines, systems, and edge devices regardless of manufacturer. “By connecting more assets and equipment (to each other and people) at the edge to the cloud, industrial operators gain more insight into the performance …
Sam Lowry: I only know you got the wrong man.
Jack Lint: Information Transit got the wrong man. I got the right man. The 'wrong man' was delivered to me as the 'right man.' I accepted him on good faith as the 'right man.' Was I wrong?
Sam Lowry: You killed Buttle?
Jack Lint: Sam, there are very rigid parameters laid down to prevent such things happening. It wasn't my fault that Buttle's
heart condition didn't appear on Tuttle's file...
(to his young daughter) We're going to have to bring Mr. Tuttle in,
aren't we? And interrogate him at the same
voltage as Mr. Buttle - and juggle the books in electrical banking.
Sam Lowry: What has Tuttle done?
Jack Lint: We suspect him of, uh, free lance subversion. Then all I need to wrap up the
case is the Layton woman.
Sam Lowry: What has she done?
Jack Lint: Oh, she witnessed the Tuttle, uhm, the Buttle arrest and essentially is going
around making wild allegations, obviously
trying to exploit the situation. She's working
for someone and I don't think it's us.
You just know that with so many big industry stakeholders trying to get some unswervable IP in the pie it'll turn into a clusterfuck of almost-connected things. Think of MMS and DLNA: all those lovely use cases collapsing at system boundaries where one device mutely refuses to access another and the best advice is to avoid heterogeneous configurations, just go and buy new kit from the same maker and try to get the same version software on it...
Whereas by wednesday arvo the black-hats will melt your ice-cream with the heat of your fridge mining bitcoins and have custom firmware on your internal router. Which as it's a Belkin could even be a good thing!
The current system for finding out when things go wrong is when the citizens in the neighborhood of the device call in to let someone know it doesn't work. Such as street lamps and crosswalk buttons. Now imagine trying to set that IOT device up. There will be a lot of paperwork just to note the location, like 27b/6.
How problematic would the firmware be? Depends on what it does. If it only reports, then there's not much of an attack vector, unless it's through the IP stack. But the ARM chips, if the system really is bare bones, don't have enough room for large complex code anyways. The IP stack itself will take up most of the space.
I think my fridge has got a mole, a rat, a trojan and a virus. is there an anti malware suite to cover it? Along with the kettle, the oven, the toaster and I'm having qite a few problems with the ice cream maker only turning out vanilla.
Oh! and every time my wife gets undressed the curtains open!
"I think my fridge has got a mole, a rat, a trojan and a virus. is there an anti malware suite to cover it?"
Perhaps, but what is more likely to happen is your internet connected fridge will advertise to you, whatever Anti-virus brand is affiliated with your fridge brand.
And because it's a locked-down applicance, there will be no way for you to turn the ads off.
Be careful what you wish for...
That doesn't seem like a combo that has any experience regarding security. Cisco is famous for not having "protected mode" memory in their operating system, even on hardware that would support it. Intel thought it would be a good idea to buy McAffee. And GE probably is in the same industrial automation mess all the other companies are in, too. Ever heard of OPC? That's OLE for Process Control, and a way of getting data out of industrial systems Poettering might have been proud of.
I've heard of OPC and yes, it's a security nightmare which is why industrial automation is now looking at OPC-UA.
It's also faintly possible that GE has sufficient clout to buy in the security knowledge and in some areas acquire it (e.g Wurldtech). It's also possible that GE has spent the last few years investigating secure architecture for Industrial Controllers so they're not complete virgins in the security space. It's possible that when GE talks about the IoT they are talking not about fridges but about the things they actually do, like pumps, motors, automation.
Part of the reason for this is that it's needed to keep driving down (or keeping stable) the costs of the things you need .. like power. For example .. Do you know how expensive it is to take the wrong spare out to a North Sea Oil rig because a maintenance engineer didn't have the expertise to diagnose that the blown power stack was actually caused by a faulty bearing? Do you know how much the owner loses because the bearing needs replacing NOW, rather than being able to plan maintenance?
The IoT is not just about fridges and light bulbs. It's also about using big data techniques to predict failure, improve maintenance and lower the losses due to faulty equipment. To get that data you need sensors on everything .. temperature of pumps, vibration on bearings, current, volts, and you need to gather, analyse and see patterns in that data. That's GE's IoT.
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