As Samsung Electronics and General Electric make refrigerators that can tell if you’re out of milk and ovens that can be switched on with a mobile phone, Eva Chen warns that such advances may also let hackers into your home.
The president of Trend Micro, the Tokyo-based developer of security software, said that threats from hacking will spread as appliances, cameras and other devices connect to the web. Chen’s betting that protection for the so-called 'Internet of Things' will be among the main reasons that her company will more than double its number of users in three years.
“You’ll feel like you’re living in a glass house,” Chen, 55, said in a recent interview. “The consumer doesn’t even know that their device is hooking up to the Internet and sending all this information out.”
Shares rose 0.7 per cent to 3,605 yen in Tokyo trading on Friday, narrowing the decline for the year to 2 per cent.
As Samsung, GE, Apple Inc. and Google Inc. race to infuse more technology into everyday devices, potential risks are beginning to emerge.
Already, there’s been a reported case of a hacker who terrorised a family in Houston by remotely hijacking a baby monitor.
This year, the European Cybercrime Centre warned that web-connected appliances could lead to new types of targeted attacks, theft and possibly physical injuries.
Household Hacking
“Some of these appliances are being shipped with the same flimsy security as web cameras,” said Motohiro Nakanishi, a security analyst at Tokyo-based IPA Japan. “If you know the default password, you can get access.”
While the majority of incidents of hackings into the home have been limited to web-camera intrusions, researchers have found ways to tamper with everything from cars to toilets.
News by Bloomberg, edited by ESM
