From Westworld to Best World for the Internet of Things

Last month the F.B.I. issued an urgent warning: Everyone with home internet routers should reboot them to shed them of malware from “foreign cyberactors.”

Putting aside the strangeness that for once power-cycling a device could perform an effective exorcism upon it, the episode reveals more than just the potential for disruption of internet access for people using equipment they never expect to have to physically manage. It also underscores how unprepared we are to manage downstream-networked devices and appliances — the “internet of things” — that are vulnerable to attack.

A longstanding ethos of internet development lets anyone build and share new code and services, with consequences to be dealt with later. I call this the “procrastination principle,” and I don’t regret supporting it. But it’s hard to feel the same way about the internet of things.

Worries about security for these devices have become widespread, and they fall roughly into two categories.

First, compromised networked things can endanger their users. In 2015, Chrysler recalled 1.4 million vehicles after researchers showed they could hack a Jeep and disable its brakes and transmission. Coffee makers and other appliances with heating elements could have safety features overridden, starting a fire. And an alert was issued on certain pacemakers last year after vulnerabilities were found that could allow attackers to gain unauthorized access and issue commands to the devices.

Second, hacking even a tiny subset of the 10 billion and counting networked things can produce threats larger than any one consumer. Individually these devices may be too small to care about; together they become too big to fail. Security systems in a city could be made to sound an alarm simultaneously. Light bulbs can be organized into bot armies, directed to harm any other internet-connected target. And worse than a single Jeep executing an unexpected sharp left turn is a whole fleet of them doing so.