Borepatch has a post up this morning concerning an apparently typical Internet security facepalm and to tell the truth I would have glanced at it and mooched on by because I don’t understand three words of what he linked to. It’s all encryption-speak, and I’m sure it’s perfectly clear to Borepatch, the writer, Neal Stephenson and God but it’s greek to me. Except for one phrase in his intro, which got my attention…
…the new fangled WiFi enabled light bulbs.
…the wha?
There is a whole series of questions I never thought I’d ask, and they all seem brought to me courtesy of the Internet. Questions like, What exactly does a smart toilet do better than a dumb one? I still don’t know the answer, and now I’ve got to find out what the hell anyone would ever want with a wi-fi lightbulb. After I’ve learned the answer I’ll tackle the tougher question of why you’d ever go to the trouble of hacking somebody else’s.
Turning on and off your lights from the comfort of bed, making the lights red at night so you don’t mess up your night vision and of course the ever important party mode. You can even turn the lights on and off at home when away so as not to attract the attention of burglars.
Or you could move to the middle of the desert where you don’t have to worry about such trivial things. Then you can spend your time worrying about your satellite connection (which you’d need working to be able to control your wifi lights anyway).
And as far as why hack into a WiFi light bulb, how better to annoy that annoying neighbor than to keep shutting off his lights? I presume that if one actually turned off the manual light-switch so that no electricity goes to the light socket than no one can turn on the WiFI light bulbs, but if the switch is on then you can turn the light bulb on and off through the WiFi.
I should have been clearer – people can crack the password of your wifi because the encryption used by the light bulb is broken. Actually, wifi in a light bulb is broken, too, but this is broken on top of broken.