During the weekend of March 5-6 2016, the MIT Media Lab hosted a conference focused on the Security of the Internet of Things. With the internet of things, we have many new devices, such as cars, baby monitors, thermostats, electrical outlets, and a host of other devices coming onto the internet. As more and more of these devices come online, security is becoming and will continue to become an even greater concern. This was the focus of the event.

The event included both a foundation of the current and future states of IoT security and hands on application with real-world devices. Bruce Schneier, was recently back from a trip to the RSA conference and made an appearance to give a similar talk at the MIT conference. In this talk, he presented a couple of ideas. First, IoT is just starting to take off. The technology industry is rapidly working to bring more and more devices on the internet. These devices are produced first and foremost with a concern forgetting the device to market faster than the competitors, and security as an afterthought. As the industry matures, security will take more and more of a spotlight. New government organizations will be created to manage the security of devices, regulations on software will be created, further education, and other measures will be applied. Even with all of this, however, Schneier did not believe that we will be able to truly secure the industry. Eventually there will be a point where we decide that not every device needs to be on the internet and the number of devices will begin to shrink.

Several speakers discussed issues with the ways that companies use open source libraries. As a result of all of these devices being rushed to market, manufacturers of devices often release firmware releases without ever updating the open source libraries that are a part of their codebase. As time goes on, more and more vulnerabilities are discovered in these libraries, and even though the code written by the company itself gets patched, the products have increasingly more vulnerabilities until the libraries are updated. These speakers made sure to emphasize that even though a library was included in a project did not mean that the area of code with the vulnerability was accessed, and therefore not all were vectors for attack.

The talks occupied much of the morning, but after lunch, both days included hands on activities. MIT supplied several devices including thermostats, electrical outlets,drones, and light bulbs. The first hands on activity was presented by Synopsys. Synopsys provided a copy of their tool Protecode-SE for attendees to use with these devicesi n order to look at the firmware and see what vulnerabilities existed. Attendees could then attempt to break into these devices. Many vulnerabilities were found and some groups even succeeded in breaking into their devices.

On the second day, there were two hands on activities. The first was presented by Defensics. Defensics provided a fuzzer that they had produced. A fuzzer is a tool that takes a valid input for a device whether it be file, HTTP, SNMP, SMTP, or some other protocol and tries different permutations on the input to see how the device reacts. If a device handles the input incorrectly, then it may be a possible attack vector. Groups were able to apply this tool to their devices to see what the results were. One group had a lot of luck with the thermostat that they were supplied. It was suggested that all software companies include a fuzzer in the testing measures for their products.

To wrap up the event, a startup sponsoring the event called DoJo labs supplied a device that they were creating to bring security to IoT Devices. This device that monitors traffic patterns on a home network to see when a device is acting improperly and notify the user. Each device is authorized on a network and with what permissions it should have (all network, no network, specific resources). Traffic patterns for devices are monitored globally. If a device all of a sudden starts sending traffic to a new destination, increased traffic, new protocols, or otherwise odd behavior, the device flags this as a possible threat and notifies the user if it’s not registered as a threat, or handles it itself if it is registered. This looks like a very interesting device that has the potential to take off as IoT security becomes more of a concern.

As a software engineer, I found this event to be a lot of fun and would definitely encourage others in the industry to attend as well. I found the event to provide a solid foundation in the state of security, an understating of how to improve the security in software that I write, and fun hands on activities. I believe that this event has served to help me understand the issues with security and how to improve it in my own products. I look forward to the next event.