IoT security is a pretty hot topic in today’s world. That’s because the increasing number of smart devices is causing issues with security professionals everywhere. Consumer IoT devices are expected to top 20 billion by 2020. And each of these smart devices represents an attack surface. Or does it?

Hello, Dave

Adding intelligence to a device increases the number of ways that it can compromised. Take a simple thermostat, for example. The most basic themostat is about as dumb as you can get. It uses the expansion properties of metal to trigger switches inside of the housing. You set a dial or a switch and it takes care of the rest. Once you start adding things like programmability or cloud connection, you increase the number of ways that you can access the device. Maybe it’s a webpage or an app. Maybe you can access it via wireless or Bluetooth. No matter how you do it, it’s more available than the simple version of the thermostat.

What about industrial IoT devices? The same rule applies. In this case, we’re often adding remote access to Supervisory Control And Data Acquistion (SCADA) systems. There’s a big market from enterprise IT providers to create secured equipment that allows access to existing industrial equipment from centralized control dashboards. It makes these devices “smart” and allows you to make them easier to manage.

Industrial IoT has the same kind of issues that consumer devices do. We’re increasing the number of access avenues to these devices. But does that mean they’re a security risk? The question could be as simple as asking if the devices are any easier to hack than their dumb counterparts. If that is our only yardstick, then the answer is most assuredly yes they are a security risk. My fridge does not have the ability for me to access it over the internet. By installing an operating system and connecting it to the wireless network in my house I’m increasing the attack surface.

Another good example of this increasing attack surface is in home devices that aren’t consumer focused. Let’s take a look at the electrical grid. Our homes are slowly being upgraded with so-called “smart” electrical meters that allow us to have more control over power usage in our homes. It also allows the electric companies to monitor the devices more closely and read the electric meters remotely instead of needing to dispatch humans to read those meters. These smart meters often operate on Wi-Fi networks for ease-of-access. If all we do is add the meters to a wireless network, are we really creating security issues?

Bigfoot-Sized Footprints

No matter how intelligent the device, increasing access avenues to the device creates security access issues. A good example of this is the “hidden” diagnostic port on the original Apple Watch. Even though the port had no real use beyond internal diagnostics at Apple, it was a tempting target for people to try and get access to the system. Sometimes these hidden ports can dump hidden data or give low-level access to areas of the system that aren’t normally available. While the Apple Watch port didn’t have this kind of access, other devices can offer it.

Giving access to any device allows you to attack it in a way that can gain you access that can get you into data that you’re not supposed to have. Sure, a smart speaker is a very simple device. But what if someone found a way to remotely access the data and capture the data stream? Or the recording buffer? Most smart speakers are monitoring audio data listening for their trigger word to take commands. Normally this data stream is dumped. But what if someone found a way to reconstruct it? Do you think that could qualify as a hack? All it takes is an enterprising person to figure out how to get low-level access. And before you say it’s impossible, remember that we allow access to these devices in other ways. It’s only a matter of time before someone finds a hole.

As for industrial machines, these are even more tempting. By gaining access to the master control systems, you can cause some pretty credible havoc with their programming. You can shut down all manner of industrial devices. Stuxnet was a great example of writing a very specific piece of malware that was designed to cause problems for a specific kind of industrial equipment. Because of the nature of the program it was very difficult to figure out exactly what was causing the issues. All it took was access to the systems, which was reportedly caused by hiding the program on USB drives and seeding them in parking lots where they would be picked up and installed in the target facilities.

IoT devices, whether consumer or enterprise, represent potential threat vectors. You can’t simply assume that a simple device is safe because there isn’t much to hack. The Mirai bonnet exploited bad password hygiene in devices to allow them to be easily hacked. It wasn’t a complicated silicon-level hack or a coordinated nation state effort. It was the result of someone cracking a hard-coded password and exploiting that for their own needs. Smart devices can be made to make dumb decisions when used improperly.

Tom’s Take

IoT security is both simple and hard at the same time. Securing these devices is a priority for your organization. You may never have the compromised, but you have to treat them just like you would any other device that could potentially be hacked and turned against you. Zero-trust security models are a great way to account for this, but you need to make sure you’re not overlooking IoT when you build that model. Because the invisible devices helping us get our daily work done could quickly become the vector for hacking attacks that bring our day to a grinding halt.