14 DAY TRIAL // Governments will soon step in and demand regulation of the security measures applied to IoT devices, believes security guru Bruce Schneier.
According to Schneier, who gave a keynote speech at the Infosecurity Europe 2017 event, this measure is only natural since the industry has failed to self-regulate over the years, leaving the world susceptible to multiple attacks from all types of actors.
The Register reports that Schneier believes the correct way to think about the Internet of Things is as if we are building a world-sized distributed robot with no centralized control. Of course, this is not a robot in the classic sense, such as we see in movies. "But the Internet senses, thinks and acts. And what is interesting to me about that is that's the classic definition of a robot," Schneier said.
Since every device around us is nowadays a computer, it's only natural that regulation is coming. "There is a lot of worry that regulation will stiffle innovation, but if you look at history that is not the case. The real physical threat from the Internet of Things will force governments to act because we are talking about fear, and nothing makes a government do something like fear," Schneier added.
Laughable security for IoT devices
Of course, he is right, given how many times over the past few months alone we've heard about hijacked wireless cameras, gadgets, toys, and so on. Botnets used in DDoS attacks often make use of hundreds of thousands of unsecured IoT devices.
In fact, the situation has become so dire that one white hat has built a worm called Hajime which infects IoT devices and closes down the ports most often hijacked by attackers, effectively blocking any other worm from taking control of the devices.
It's clear that something must be done and it must be done with the involvement of both governments and tech companies so that some unified standards are created, which everyone can adhere to.