Cybercrime: Defrosting and the Internet of Things

It was only a matter of time before someone, somewhere, contemplating their abilities for cybercrime, found the link between the Internet of Things, the linking of household and other machines to the internet, and a way to control or impede. There have been countless examples of people, across all branches and forms of social media, asking why their toaster, their washing machine, their refrigerator needs to be connected to the internet, why it needs to be available for software updates. A toaster is designed to toast bread, it has various levels of burning, a timer for the appropriate moment, and a mechanism to shoot the completed article out. A washing machine has programmed cycles according to what needs to be washed. The customer packs their clothing and cleaning agent into the machine, switches it on, and waits until it is finished. Nothing could be simpler, nothing needs to be changed. And then there is the opening for those contemplating cybercrime.

We no longer only have to worry about a Trojan Horse and or click-thru virus being implanted on our computers or smartphones, or advertising which automatically implants a tracker or other malicious software – zero clicks malware – on our devices. Now we have to take care that our toaster, our washing machine, and especially our refrigerator is safe from malicious attack. Now we have to worry that our automatic lawnmower will turn and attack the cat, or us, taken over my some mad control system determined to bring on world domination or, at the very least the Final Judgement Day. The days of watching comedy films where the house systems do not do what they are designed to do, where the owner is locked in – or out – and spends ninety minutes of our time finding a way to bring things back to order are long gone. Now we are faced with reality of cybercrime, and criminals who can break into our homes at any time of the day or night, leaving no trace of their presence until the moment of truth.

There is a certain logic in the idea that supermarket refrigerators should be controlled from a central point, for those interested in saving money and maximising profit. It makes sense to have one person controlling a system among many and being paid one wage, rather than one person in each store whose duty it is to supervise the correct running of equipment; even though that one person who undoubtedly be responsible for many other things too. It makes sense only if your aim is to save money and maximise profit: for the customer it makes no difference whatsoever; until something goes wrong. The one report of an attack being thwarted of late came from a business which had the right person, at the right place, at the right time. The expert siting in front of a bank of monitors supervising hundreds of refrigerator units was not that person. A device without a warning system built in to its basic functions is worthless, unless there is a human eye there to keep everything above board and ticking over correctly.

For the cyber criminal it makes no difference whether a refrigerator unit in a supermarket has been reprogrammed to overheat, or a blood bank. For them it is the crime itself, the success of having broken in to a theoretically secure system and found a way to break or change it. Cybercrime is not always about the money, or the disruption. Often it is just the prize of having succeeded. But with that success comes a certain feeling of power, of mastery, and a sign to others of a different bent that there is a way in, and major disruption, distrust, and fear can be sown quickly and easily. There is a clear sign to those wishing to overthrow a political or capitalistic system that mass disruption is possible from afar, without the need to place the instigator in any form of danger. There is also a clear sign that saving the price of paying someone to do a simple job on site, as part of their daily duties, is a false saving. We should bear in mind that when a refrigerator unit needs to be defrosted, there has to be someone present to both empty and refill it and, therefore, no reason whatsoever why the mechanics of defrosting, cleaning and restarting the unit shouldn’t all be part of the same process, on site.

Not all technical progress is good, not all progress necessarily saves time and money. Sometimes it is far better to consider ease of use, as much as the possibility of cybercrime or other malicious actions. The small cost of ensuring that a qualified person has a job to go to each day is far more of a protection against cybercrime, against shoplifters and other criminal elements, than someone hidden away in an office, taking their well-earned smoke break, while their charges are plundered on the other side of the country. And do we really need to have every toaster, refrigerator and washing machine connected to a massive system somewhere? Isn’t it enough that our televisions are spying on us, or automatic room cleaners sending back detailed floor plans, and our faces being photographed on street corners to feed a database of otherwise useless information available to be sold to the highest bidder? Perhaps we ought to prepare ourselves for the big cybercrime day, when everything under the Internet of Things is rendered useless, when we can go back to burying our food stocks with ice at the bottom of the garden, harvesting peas from the vine, and toasting homemade bread in front of a roaring, warming, unlinked bonfire.