Your Gmail Can Now Be Compromised By Your… Fridge?!

jack o lantern fridge
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The Internet of Things is Silicon Valley’s catch-all phrase for jamming a computer into everything. Your lightbulbs, your stove, your pants, your pets, no matter what it is, a startup or a major conglomerate is planning to shove some silicon all up in its business. Unfortunately for us, they’re not quite so good with security, which is why your fridge is also now potentially a traitor.

As found by Boing Boing, researchers have discovered that Samsung’s fancy new fridges have a pretty crucial security failing. When presented with a secure socket layer certificate, they don’t validate it, allowing hackers to jack up your fridge and anything connected to it. Like, say, your phone, because these smart fridges have an app for some reason we can’t quite discern. In the extreme case, this could potentially give hackers the ability to reformat your fridge and its app, letting them into even more of your business.

How do you prevent this? Well, first of all, shut off your fridge’s WiFi, which is a sentence we cannot believe we are actually putting on the Internet. Secondly, consider not installing apps and just settling for poking at your fridge’s buttons in person, instead. Samsung likely already has a fix on the way, but really, the fundamental moral here is some things just don’t need an app.

(via BoingBoing)

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