New technology often saturates a market before fully ripening to prime usefulness. The race to be first to market is often seen in the idea of recognized household names like Alexa, Blackberry, or even the Oculus Rift. While they might not always be the best at what they do, the familiarity can smooth over many of the kinks in the products they produce.
The Hickory Smart Bluetooth Enabled Deadbolt allows its user to manage their home security remotely and to have the assurance that the door is locked in case they are concerned that they forgot to do so when they left the house. While this function seems to be useful to a potential customer, they have had 6 vulnerabilities uncovered by Rapid7 security researchers. One of the most concerning vulnerabilities is cleartext credential transmission from the Hickory Smart Ethernet Bridge device; it’s something I would expect even the least security minded designer to avoid.
The rest of the data is encrypted and it would be difficult to translate the credentials into actionable information regarding the deadbolt, but if the user were to change the credentials from the defaults and an adversary were able to obtain said credentials, they could be included in future credential stuffing attacks affecting the user. The Amcrest IP2M-841B IP camera is a rebranded Dahua camera; Dahua has had a history of security issues. It has a bug that exposes allows anyone to connect to the camera over http and decode the audio output for their listening pleasure.
The camera wraps transmissions in a DHAV container, but it is trivial to decipher and play in a VLC player. In their haste to provide a product, they seem to be keeping these products at different patch levels, exposing users to security issues that may have been already patched. As Amcrest is one of many companies to sell rebranded Dahua products, it is unknown how many products are vulnerable to this bug.
While the focus on being first to market with a technology may establish a foothold in the homes of consumers, it also makes the customers they seek to serve vulnerable to any cyber security risks that may have been left on the cutting room floor in the rush to get the product out the door. Testing and security is becoming ever more challenging by the day and each year we find our old standards insufficient. The effort to obtain access to an unlocked door or bugged camera might not be cost efficient to do for the average person at scale, but it easily puts higher value targets at risk, and simply not being a target is no excuse to support these practices.
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