693
Homeowner baffled after washing machine uses 3.6GB of internet data a day
(www.newsweek.com)
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 04 Apr 2024
693 points (87.5% liked)
Technology
59381 readers
985 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related content.
- Be excellent to each another!
- 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, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
Approved Bots
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
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.
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.
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.