A newly announced exploitable security weakness in the WPA2 protocol is spelling trouble for most Internet wi-fi routers, including home routers, and Internet of Things (IoT) devices. The KRACK (Key Reinstallation Attacks) vulnerability in WPA2 has the potential for such widespread security incidents (because WPA2 is deployed nearly everywhere, and because this is not OS-specific, but attacks the router) that the revealing of it was coordinated among the researchers who have discovered it.
Last week several “news” sites reported that Samsung Smart Televisions were always listening and sharing everything you say with a third-party. As recently as this morning, other services were repeating this allegation. This is because Samsung’s Smart TV privacy policy included, at the time, this statement: “Please be aware that if your spoken words include personal or other sensitive information, that information will be among the data captured and transmitted to a third party.”
The Detroit Free Press is reporting on a second Tesla autopilot crash. The crash, which was nonfatal, occurred last week in Pennsylvania. The more widely reported, fatal Tesla crash that happened in Florida on May 7th, killing Joshua Brown of Canton, Ohio, also involved the use of the autopilot feature.
In one of the creepier, more invasive – or brilliant, depending on your views – uses of the Internet of Things, smart CPAP machines are being monitored, and even adjusted, from across the Internet, and if you aren’t using yours often enough (known as ‘CPAP compliance’ or being ‘CPAP compliant’, your medical insurance company won’t pay for it, and your life insurance and health insurance premiums could go up. Now, for recent users of the CPAP (Continuous Positive Air Pressure) machines, this may be old news, but for the rest of us, HOLY CPAP!
In a clear indication that the Internet of Things has gone too far, a brand new startup called TrackMyFlow (yes, really) is marketing a smart tampon (yes really) and ‘tampon monitor’ that lets you know when your tampon is about to overfloweth (something that any woman anywhere does not need an external gadget to tell her). Track My Flow provides both a smart monitor, and the my.Flow app, along with the smart tampons (with crazy-long strings – more on that later), and they promise that they are “working hard to provide a solution to menstruation mortification.” (And if those words made you squirm, you may want to stop reading here.)