Gadgets

Cheap Internet of Things gadgets betray you even after you toss them in the trash – TechCrunch

Published

4 years ago

January 31, 2019

You may think that the worst you’ll risk by buying a bargain-bin smart bulb or security camera will be a bit of extra trouble setting it up or a lack of settings. But it’s not just while they’re plugged in that these slapdash gadgets are a security risk — even from the garbage can, they can still compromise your network.

Although these so-called Internet of Things gadgets are small and rather dumb, they’re still full-fledged networked computers for all intents and purposes. You may not need to do much, but you still need to take many of the same basic precautions to prevent them from, say, broadcasting your private information unencrypted to the world, or granting root access to anyone walking by.

In the case of these low-cost “smart” bulbs investigated by Limited Results (via Hack a Day), the issue isn’t what they do while connected but what they keep onboard their tiny brains, and how.

All the bulbs they tested proved to have no real security at all protecting the information kept on the chips inside. After exposing the PCBs, they attached a few leads and in a moment each device would spit out its boot data and be ready to take commands.

The data was without exception totally unencrypted, including the wireless password to the network to which the device had been connected. One device also exposed its private RSA key, used to create secure connections to whatever servers it connects to (for example to check for updates, upload user data to the cloud and so on). This information would be available to anyone who grabbed this bulb out of the trash, or stole it from an outdoor fixture or bought it secondhand.

“Seriously, 90 percent of IoT devices are developed without security in mind. It is just a disaster,” wrote Limited Results in an email. “In my research, I have targeted four different devices : LIFX, XIAOMI, TUYA and WIZ (not published yet, very unkind people). Same devices, same vulnerabilities, and even sometimes exactly same code inside.”

Now, these particular bits of information exposed on these devices aren’t that harmful in and of themselves, although if someone wanted to, they could take advantage of it in several ways. What’s important to note is the utter lack of care that went into these devices — not just their code, but their construction. They really are just basic enclosures around an off-the-shelf wireless board, with no consideration given to safety, security or longevity. And this type of thing is not by any means limited to smart bulbs.

These devices all proudly assert that they support Alexa, Google Home or other standards. This may give users a false sense that they are in some way accredited, inspected or otherwise held to basic standards.

In fact, in addition to all of them having essentially no security at all, one had its (conductive) metal shell insulated from the PCB only by a loose piece of adhesive paper. This kind of thing is an electrical fire, or at least a short, waiting to happen.

As with any other class of electronics, there’s always a pretty good reason why one is a whole lot cheaper than another. But in the case of a cheap CD player, the worst you’re going to get is skipping or a scratched disc. That’s not the case with a cheap baby monitor, a cheap smart outlet, a cheap internet-connected door lock.

I’m not saying you need to buy the premium version of every smart gadget out there — consumers need to be aware of the risks they are exposing themselves to with the installation of any such device, let alone a poorly made one.

If you want to limit your own risk, a simple step you can take is to have your smart home devices and such isolated on a subnet or guest network. Make sure that the devices, and of course your router, are password protected, and take common sense measures like changing that password regularly.

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Gadgets

The MacBook Air gets bigger with new 15-inch model

Published

2 hours ago

June 6, 2023

Francisco Peguero

The color options (left to right): midnight, starlight, space gray, and silver.

Apple
The 15-inch MacBook Air.
Port selection.

Apple
5.3-mm borders surround the 15.3-inch panel.

Apple
11.5 mm thick.

Apple
Some specs.

Apple

CUPERTINO, Calif.—It’s common for Apple to refresh its various MacBook models more or less annually, but it’s not so common that an entirely new screen size is introduced. But that’s what happened today during the company’s WWDC keynote: Apple announced a 15-inch variant of the traditionally 13-inch MacBook Air.

It’s a move that has been rumored for years.

The 15-inch MacBook Air is in most respects identical to its 13-inch counterpart and has Apple’s M2 chip. The star is the 15.3-inch screen, which has 5-mm borders and a brightness of 500 nits. Apple hasn’t provided the resolution for the screen yet, but it was rumored that the 15-inch MacBook Air would have the same resolution as the 14-inch MacBook Pro, 3024×1964. The 15-inch MacBook Air will be available with up to 24GB of RAM and 2TB of storage, Apple said today.

Design-wise, it looks like a larger version of the existing Air—or a bit like a slimmer 16-inch MacBook Pro, depending on your perspective. It’s 0.45 inches (11.5 mm) thick and weighs 3.3 pounds (1.5 kg). As on the 13-inch MacBook Air, there are two Thunderbolt ports and a headphone jack, plus MagSafe. There are also four color options.

Apple MacBook Air 15-inch with M2

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Apple is claiming an 18-hour battery life with the larger-screened Air. It has also equipped the machine with a 1080p camera, three microphones, and a six-speaker array that includes two tweeters and two sets of “force-cancelling” speakers.

The fanless 15-inch MacBook Air starts at $1,299 ($1,199 for education) and will ship next week. Orders on the Apple Store begin today.

Apple will also still sell the 13-inch MacBook Air, but the M2 version will now be $1,099, $100 less than before. The M1 version, meanwhile, will start at $999.

Gadgets

As rumored, the Mac Studio gets an M2 refresh, including fused-together M2 Ultra

Published

4 hours ago

June 6, 2023

Francisco Peguero

M2 Studio shot with monitor overhead — Enlarge / Apple’s new Mac Studio offers the M2 Ultra chip, which, like its M1 counterpart, provides vastly greater computing power.

Apple

CUPERTINO, Calif.—The Mac Studio will be refreshed this summer with chips based on the M2, including the M2 Max and new M2 Ultra, the “most powerful chip” ever released “for a personal computer.”

The M2 Pro and M2 Max have previously been seen in MacBook Pro models released late last year, but the M2 Ultra will be a first. In the M1 line, the Ultra was the top-of-the-line chip with substantially better performance than the Pro or Max—particularly in graphically intensive tasks. M2 Ultra will support 192 GB of unified memory, 800 GB/s memory bandwith, and a 24-core CPU and up to 76 cores of GPU. Apple claims the M2 Ultra will work 30% faster than the M1 Ultra, and that a single system with the Ultra can work machine learning datasets that would choke systems with discrete GPUs.

The M2 Max is “up to 50 percent faster” than the prior Max-based Studio, according to Apple, and features a 12-core CPU, 38-core GPU, and up to 96 GB unified memory, with 400 GB/s memory bandwidth.

The M2 Studio's notable specs, as squared up by Apple — Enlarge / The M2 Studio’s notable specs, as squared up by Apple

Apple

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Beyond the new chips, the Mac Studio’s refresh is mostly business as usual. There aren’t any substantial differences in design or features compared to the previous model. There is higher bandwidth HDMI, and it can support up to six high-resolution displays. Notably, the Mac Studio is somewhat upstaged this year by the debut of the new M2-powered Mac Pro.

The new Mac Studio will launch “next week” and pre-orders start today. It starts at $1,999.

Gadgets

This is the new Apple Silicon Mac Pro

Published

5 hours ago

June 6, 2023

Francisco Peguero

The Apple Mac Pro. It’s still the cheese grater design.

Apple
The back.

Apple
The inside, with lots of room for activities.

Apple
The rackmount version.

Apple

CUPERTINO, Calif.—It has been three years since Apple began transitioning its Mac lineup away from Intel chips to its own silicon, and that project completes today with the last product to make the transition: the Mac Pro desktop tower.

The Mac Pro might not look different from its predecessor on the outside, but on the inside, Intel’s Xeon CPU and AMD’s Radeon Pro graphics are gone, and in their place we have a new chip called the M2 Ultra. This is the same chip in the new Mac Studio; it has a 24-core CPU and an up to 76-core GPU, and it starts with twice the memory and SSD storage of the old Mac Pro. Apple promises it will be “3x faster” than the Intel Mac Pro. Memory tops out at 192GB. These stats all match the new Mac Studio—the only thing you get from the bigger chassis is expansion capabilities and more ports.

Apple

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The whole point of a Mac tower is support for traditional expansion cards, and that normally means discrete GPUs. Apple demoed some expansion cards, but none of them were graphics cards. It sounds like you’ll be using the M2 Ultra’s on-board GPU. Making real graphics cards work with an ARM chip would have been a massive undertaking—for starters, no ARM drivers exist. Even for the non-GPU options, compatibility will be an interesting problem. Apple calls out digital signal processing (DSP) cards, serial digital interface (SDI) I/O cards, and additional networking and storage as PCI express card possibilities.

The new Mac Pro comes with eight Thunderbolt 4 ports—six on the back and two on the top—and seven total (six open) PCI Express Gen 4 slots. There are three USB-A ports (one top, two back), two HDMI ports that support 8K resolution and up to 240 Hz frame rates, two 10Gb Ethernet ports, and a headphone jack (!). The new Mac Pro has no hard-wired back panel, and every one of those back ports (six Thunderbolt, three HDMI, two USB, and one headphone) lives on the one included PCI Express card. The tower also supports Wi-Fi 6e and Bluetooth 5.3. It’s available in both tower and rack-mount form factors.

The Mac Pro starts at $6,999. It’s up for preorder today on the Apple Store and will ship on June 13.

Listing image by Apple