Given that email has been around for a very long time now, it is not surprising that over the years, its security has been improved upon to the point where emails are now relatively secure, assuming that on your end you don’t do anything that could compromise its security. Unfortunately the same cannot be said for smart home platforms, which for the most part is still new-ish tech.
In fact it seems that a team of researchers at the University of Michigan have managed to hack Samsung’s SmartThings smart home platform, thanks to the discovery of some rather disturbing security flaws. In the video above, the researchers demonstrate how they were able to pull off the hack which allows them to open electronic locks, change a home system’s “vacation” setting, and even set off the home’s fire alarm by sending it false messages.
The point of this demonstration is to show just how much access the apps on the SmartThings platform have to other connected objects around the home. According to Atul Prakash, one of the researchers on the project, “Say you give someone permission to change the lightbulb in your office, but the person also ends up getting access to your entire office, including the contents of your filing cabinets.”
In a blog post, SmartThings’ CEO Alex Hawkinson has addressed the issue and states that they are working with the research team to help squash the potential vulnerabilities discovered. “Over the past several weeks, we have been working with this research team and have already implemented a number of updates to further protect against the potential vulnerabilities disclosed in the report. It is important to note that none of the vulnerabilities described have affected any of our customers thanks to the SmartApp approval processes that we have in place.”
Filed in . Read more about Connected Objects, IoT (Internet of Things), Samsung and Security.