tal comments on Homeowner baffled after washing machine uses 3.6GB of internet data a day

Technology

87,956 readers

15,865 active

2,891 users here now

This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.

Our Rules

Follow the lemmy.world rules.
Only tech related news or articles.
Be excellent to each other!
Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
Politics threads may be removed.
No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
Only approved bots from the list below, this includes using AI responses and summaries. To ask if your bot can be added please contact a mod.
Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
Accounts 7 days and younger will have their posts automatically removed.

Approved Bots

founded 3 years ago

moderators

[–] tal@lemmy.today 10 points 2 years ago (2 children)

I would imagine that someone might have compromised the washing machine and used it as part of a botnet to attack another system. I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that washing machine companies might not be the most-proactive at pushing security updates.

permalink

fedilink

source

hideshow 2 child comments

[–] TimeSquirrel@kbin.social 7 points 2 years ago* (1 child)

If it's got a full general purpose CPU and OS, yeah it can be vulnerable, but a lot of IoT stuff use microcontrollers that run one monolithic program. There's usually no other OS services or hidden exploits to use, I'm having trouble imagining how you'd break out of such a device once you've taken control of it, if you can at all. Can a smarter person correct me if I'm wrong, and explain how chips like the common ESP32 and ESP8266 are vulnerable to attack? Maybe through the RTOS and Wifi stack?

I'm an embedded hobbyist so I'd like to learn about securing my own devices.

permalink

fedilink

source

parent

hideshow 1 child comment

[–] redcalcium@lemmy.institute 2 points 2 years ago

Compromised iot devices sold as residential proxy is pretty hot right now: https://thehackernews.com/2024/03/themoon-botnet-resurfaces-exploiting.html?m=1

Those are targeting Linux routers and iot devices though. However, esp32 had vulnerabilities in the past such as the fatal fury attack, though it requires physical access to execute.

permalink

fedilink

source

parent