Subscriber Discussion

FTC's IoT Home Inspector Challege

SM
Steve Mitchell
Jan 04, 2017

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is hosting a prize competition that challenges the public to create a technical solution (“tool”) that consumers can use to guard against security vulnerabilities in software found on the Internet of Things (IoT) devices in their homes.

The tool would, at a minimum, help protect consumers from security vulnerabilities caused by out-of-date software. Contestants have the option of adding features, such as those that would address hard-coded, factory default or easy-to-guess passwords.

The prize for the competition is up to $25,000, with $3,000 available for each honorable mention winner(s). Winners will be announced on or about July 27, 2017.

IoT Home Inspector Challenge

SM
Steve Mitchell
Jan 04, 2017

Although there may already be a strong contender here in Bitdefender Box:

Box runs vulnerability scans on every device on the home network every three days. It checks for password strength, firmware version and any weakness that can be used as a backdoor attack vector.

(While Bitdefender Box is currently announcing a second generation device at CES that includes deep packet inspection).

The upshot of all this may be a demonstration of an emerging market adjunct to IoT for products designed to keep said opaque IoT devices secure when doing so directly is difficult/impossible.

I share this with the IPVM community thinking that similar patterns could emerge in securing fundamentally insecure IP products.

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Hal Bennick
Jan 05, 2017
Trafficware, a CUBIC Company

(1)
SM
Steve Mitchell
Jan 05, 2017

Hey, submit it.  Might be $25,000 in it for you.

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