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It’s official, your data is not safe. Whether it is Facebook, Equifax, Yahoo, FriendFinder, or LinkedIn. Hackers have ever-developing methods of stealing personal data. This latest data breach takes the cake for ingenuity because they were able to steal a casino’s high-roller database through a thermometer in a fish tank.
Hackers were able to infiltrate a casino’s database by sneaking in through a thermometer in an aquarium in the lobby. The hackers were able to steal the casino’s high-roller database of gamblers according to Nicole Eagan, the CEO of cybersecurity company Darktrace. “The attackers used that to get a foothold in the network,” Egan said. “They then found the high-roller database and then pulled that back across the network, out the thermostat, and up to the cloud.” Eagen did not reveal which casino fell prey to this creative cyber attack.
“There’s a lot of internet of things devices, everything from thermostats, refrigeration systems, HVAC [air conditioning] systems, to people who bring in their Alexa devices into the offices,” Eagan warned at a panel on cybersecurity last Thursday in London. “There’s just a lot of IoT. It expands the attack surface and most of this isn’t covered by traditional defenses.”
Robert Hannigan, the former head of the British government’s digital spying agency GCHQ, had his own story of how electronics that access the internet are susceptible to being hacked. “I saw a bank that had been hacked through its CCTV cameras because these devices are bought purely on cost,” Hannigan said. “With the internet of things producing thousands of new devices shoved onto the internet over the next few years, that’s going to be an increasing problem.”
Hannigan said that the Internet of Things (IoT) will need government regulations to stop these breaches. “It’s probably one area where there’ll likely need to be regulation for minimum security standards because the market isn’t going to correct itself,” he said. “The problem is these devices still work. The fish tank or the CCTV camera still work.”
So while all of our magnificent tech devices such as smart door locks, Wi-Fi lighting, and cloud-based personal voice assistants make our lives more convenient, they also open the door for cyber attacks because they are connected to the internet. Even fish tanks.