Normally, fridges are used to keep food and drink chilled to its best temperature. However, in the past two or three years, so-called ‘smart fridges’ equipped with internet connectivity have made their way into an increasing number of kitchens around the world. They have been used to search for recipes, create shopping lists and even do a bit of web surfing, but they can come with an added risk.
Recently, it was revealed that using a range of more conventional gadgets such as home routers, laptops and smartphones, some smart fridges were actually used to send out spam email to thousands of unsuspecting people. The spam attack, which lasted between December 23 and January 6, saw up to 750,000 messages sent out via appliances including smart fridges.
Defying Convention
As part of this seasonal botnet, the large majority of messages sent out to businesses and people came from laptops, desktop computers, tablets and smartphones, but something around 25% of the spam was sent via unconventional devices. This shows that, if nothing else, it’s important for anyone with a smart home appliance to make sure that it’s protected from the all kinds of malware.
Commenting on the hack, Andrew Mason from RandomStorm said:
“It is common for such devices to be compromised as they are becoming more connected. We often find a lot of vulnerabilities that could be exploited on devices such as network printers, IP CCTV systems and other IP enabled devices that often are not part of the general patching policy. Everybody knows about the risks to servers and workstations but other devices also need to be brought into the same patching policies.”
After infecting routers and computers, the infected devices then sent signals to the fridges and any similar smart devices such as TVs with internet connectivity. Then, the corrupted appliances sent out messages to a number of email addresses, thereby maximizing the potential for infection of computers and mobile devices all over the world, causing plenty of damage in the process.
Smart Solutions
The fact that more devices are being made with internet connectivity does have an unforeseen result in the form of increased vulnerability to infection by malware. This means that it has become more imperative than ever to make sure that every device that has web access should be protected to a degree, but could that be possible at all and how easy would it be to carry out?
Using the same anti-malware program for every single device could be one solution. It would be pretty convenient and, sometimes, be easier to control how each device is protected from malware. Alternatively, it might be worth going for more basic appliances which don’t have internet connectivity, although in the future, smart appliances could become almost impossible to avoid.