Hackers Control Lighting in an Office Building
Posted by: Timothy Weaver on 11/04/2016 10:48 AM
[
Comments
]
What will they hack next?
With the use of a drone and a usb stick, hackers were able to hack the Philips light bulbs in an office tower and plant a virus that jumped from bulb to bulb and allowed the hackers to turn them on and off simulating an SOS alert in Morse code.
The weakness was described as a weakness in a common wireless radio protocol called ZigBee that Philips PHG -1.31% uses to make its Hue light bulbs part of an online network.
The report authors, who work in universities in Canada and Tel Aviv, universities in Canada and Tel Aviv, postulated that the flaw could be used to throw an entire city into darkness.
"The worm spreads by jumping directly from one lamp to its neighbors, using only their built-in ZigBee wireless connectivity and their physical proximity. The attack can start by plugging in a single infected bulb anywhere in the city, and then catastrophically spread everywhere within minutes, enabling the attacker to turn all the city lights on or off, permanently brick them, or exploit them in a massive DDOS attack."
Philips Lighting was informed of the attack and said it fixed it.
"We have assessed the security impact as low given that specialist hardware, unpublished software and close proximity to Philips Hue lights are required to perform a theoretical attack,” a Philips spokesperson told the New York Times, which first reported the research.
Source: Fortune
With the use of a drone and a usb stick, hackers were able to hack the Philips light bulbs in an office tower and plant a virus that jumped from bulb to bulb and allowed the hackers to turn them on and off simulating an SOS alert in Morse code.The weakness was described as a weakness in a common wireless radio protocol called ZigBee that Philips PHG -1.31% uses to make its Hue light bulbs part of an online network.
The report authors, who work in universities in Canada and Tel Aviv, universities in Canada and Tel Aviv, postulated that the flaw could be used to throw an entire city into darkness.
"The worm spreads by jumping directly from one lamp to its neighbors, using only their built-in ZigBee wireless connectivity and their physical proximity. The attack can start by plugging in a single infected bulb anywhere in the city, and then catastrophically spread everywhere within minutes, enabling the attacker to turn all the city lights on or off, permanently brick them, or exploit them in a massive DDOS attack."
Philips Lighting was informed of the attack and said it fixed it.
"We have assessed the security impact as low given that specialist hardware, unpublished software and close proximity to Philips Hue lights are required to perform a theoretical attack,” a Philips spokesperson told the New York Times, which first reported the research.
Source: Fortune
Comments
