Thursday, March 21, 2019

Your WiFi Password Hacked from Your Lightbulbs


So you have your WiFi password all secured, right? Now you feel confident enough to set up your smart light bulbs to go on or off or even dim at your command. If you’re really smart enough, you can set them to dim or brighten to match what you’re watching on TV, like reruns of Star Trek or your DVDs of Babylon 5. And everything is secure, right? Think again.






photo by Elgato

Your smart bulbs store your WiFi password. If you casually throw away these bulbs, any enterprising info thief can dumpster dive and derive your password from these innocent bulbs. And it pretty much goes downhill from there. This was pointed out by boingboing, but if you want the profanity-free summary, go to this forum.

This flaw may be a key plot point to one of my future stories. Do you want to sneak into a secure facility? Get one of the discarded lightbulbs (or something that seems just as innocuous), hack into the security system, then make sure the system doesn’t sense you. Just make sure you use your power for good.

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