Monday, April 10, 2017

Blog 15: Making a universal remote and how to hack it.

Blog 15: Making a universal remote and how to hack it.

Greengard goes into depth about how the IoT is becoming connected along with its vulnerabilities. It is weird to think of a time where people had to be using the same phone company to talk with each other. With the advancements of technology today, we are able to take this for granted and basically call on any device nowadays. Another example that he talks about which was interesting was how difficult it would be for everyone if we all had a different way to steer a car (steering wheel, joystick, etc.). It is amazing to think about how we were able to advance with technology enough to be able to get these devices to be able to communicate with each other the way they do. The trouble we are having now is trying to get a “universal remote” that would allow you to control everything with just one remote.


While these advancements are very helpful and are the way of the future, we need to remember to be careful with how we implement security. Not only against other people, but against the technology itself. Greengard gave the example of the train that crashed due to a computer malfunction. The person operating the machine was not able to stop the train in time before the crash. We need a way to warn the driver of an impending crash possibly. We also need to make sure we are making these devices hack proof. What if a person decided to hack into these trains and make them crash? While it is nice to have everything connected in the IoT, we need to be protecting ourselves from disasters like these.


Questions:

Who should be in charge of making sure that our devices are hack proof?

How long will it be before we have a “Universal Remote”?


Picture taken from: https://az788150.vo.msecnd.net/assets/0/2147483652/2147483732/2147483733/252/5c6e585b-ead3-438e-a27d-c21a496c606b.png

Greengard, Samuel. The internet of things. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. [Chapter 5 & 6]

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