Reliance on Internet

ChristopherP

ChristopherP

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Had some floodlights put up outside the house last week. Had them wired onto a normal plug and put them through a Belkin Wemo Insight Switch. Quite cool - can just turn them on and off from the phone.

It's the future.

It led me to a conversation at work today, joking with a work colleague today about how crippled our house gets when the internet goes down and how reliant we have become on it, not now just for browsing & normal stuff but for actual 'things' to work. The following things don't work properly in our house (albeit some will run with limited functionality) without an internet connection:

Smoke Alarms
Thermostat
CCTV Cameras
Gates
NAS
TV's
Sky Boxes
Floodlights
Stereo (Sonos)
Smart Meter

+ all the obvious stuff like computers, laptops, phones, tablets etc.

In some circumstances it's actually easier if we have a power cut as most of the above gear is connected through one of 3 UPS's we have knocking about!
 
It's a good job there aren't backdoors and exploitable things all over the place! :lol:

Remember how prolific attacks use to be with worms like MS Blaster? Just imagine something on that scale that knocks off a smart meter, smart heating, etc... offline. :eek:

We're in a similar position, although we don't have as much connected, so I think the worst that would happen is our thermostat would fall back in to dumb-mode.

We don't have a smart meter fitted, although I guess we'll get one soon as they want to roll them out to everyone by 2020. Do you have any control over it, or does have have a separate GPRS/3G/4G connection for communication?
 
It's pretty scary! I had no idea that you could get WiFi smoke alarms, sounds like a good idea. Presumably, if the internet was down they would still alert you if you were in the house?
 
Living.webp


I guess the true answer is even less - for some.

But not me. :D
 
Ian said:
It's a good job there aren't backdoors and exploitable things all over the place! :lol:

Remember how prolific attacks use to be with worms like MS Blaster? Just imagine something on that scale that knocks off a smart meter, smart heating, etc... offline. :eek:

We're in a similar position, although we don't have as much connected, so I think the worst that would happen is our thermostat would fall back in to dumb-mode.

We don't have a smart meter fitted, although I guess we'll get one soon as they want to roll them out to everyone by 2020. Do you have any control over it, or does have have a separate GPRS/3G/4G connection for communication?
Click to expand...

Had a smart meter fitted last week.
They replaced the gas meter. The new one sends information to,
The new electric meter, a white box that replaced the old black clockstyle meter. This now sends gas and electric readings to the supplier via some phone card type of thing inside the white box.
I have a small hand held display (sort of like a small phone) that shows usage and some information.

The guys looked sideways at me when I asked if the system had ever been hacked. Told me that the box has a tamper switch that activates if you try to physically get inside it. Only thing you can change is graphs for readings, either half hourly, daily, weekly or monthly. Mine is set for half hourly however the handset shows usage almost immediately for electric and a lag of 15 mins or so for the gas.

:cool:

I only got mine as I am unfamiliar with mains utilities having been almost of grid for some time. It is an interesting gadget and hopefully it will help me lower me astronomical bills.
Mind you I have finished Borderlands 2 so the electric bill will definitely be lower unless I start to play Skyrim. :lol:
 
Cheers @Abarbarian, I always wondered what smart meters were like. I'm quite looking forward to getting one so that we can keep an eye on things a little more.
 
Ian said:
It's a good job there aren't backdoors and exploitable things all over the place! :lol:

Remember how prolific attacks use to be with worms like MS Blaster? Just imagine something on that scale that knocks off a smart meter, smart heating, etc... offline. :eek:

We're in a similar position, although we don't have as much connected, so I think the worst that would happen is our thermostat would fall back in to dumb-mode.

We don't have a smart meter fitted, although I guess we'll get one soon as they want to roll them out to everyone by 2020. Do you have any control over it, or does have have a separate GPRS/3G/4G connection for communication?
Click to expand...

I wonder if the rise of the home/residential network penetration tester (i.e. White Hats) is upon us. Home networks are becoming increasingly complicated and as you say, more prone to vulnerabilities. I just logged onto my router to see what it says, and I currently have 12 wireless devices and 12 wired devices on the network at the moment. Mad!
 
THIS IS HOW SKYNET HAPPENS :eek:

Well, at the moment AI could just really cheese us off if it wanted to. Probably not the same as a nuclear apocalypse though.
 
Here is a sobering thought for you home automation converts.

A great deal of internet traffic is routed through or controlled by USA companies.

Trump is not aware of this fact at the moment.

:cool:
 
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