This
posting will be a review of a recent presentation I watched on TED Talks. The
presentation I watched was by Avi Rubin and the topic was “All Your Devices Can
Be Hacked” (http://www.ted.com/talks/avi_rubin_all_your_devices_can_be_hacked.html). Avi Rubin is a professor of computer science
and director of Health and Medical Security Lab at Johns Hopkins University.
His current research is focused on the security of electronic medical records.
To summarize the presentation, Avi Rubin listed several
items that could be hacked. The first
item addressed were implanted medical devices.
Implanted medical devices have networking capabilities and are thus open
to hacking. Researchers were able to
hack devices and were able to do such things as disabling the device, running
down the battery, obtaining patient information, and other devious things as
well.
The second item addressed were automobiles. Since automobiles come with computers in them
nowadays, hackers can hack into them. Researchers
were able to wirelessly hack into the vehicle and were able to control it from
a chase car. They were able to disable
the brakes, apply the brakes, install malware, track it by using its gps, and
were able to do other things.
The third item addressed was using reflections to capture
smart phone passwords. Researchers
accomplished this by recording people on a bus, and then post processing the
video. They were able to see a
reflection in the glasses worn by the individual who was typing on their smart
phone. They then wrote software to
stabilize the phone, process it, and had a language model for detecting
typing. This resulted in the researchers
being able to track what people were typing on their phones.
The fourth item addressed were P25 radios which are used by
law enforcement and other government agencies.
Researchers were able to make a jammer that made it so the radios could
not communicate with one another.
Researchers were also able to use a scanner that operated at the same
frequency as the radio and were able to get information from wiretaps, info
from confidential informants, and other confidential information.
The last item addressed was stealing keystrokes. Researchers were able steal keystrokes by
leaving an iphone by a computer keyboard.
They were able to use the vibrations created from typing and measure the
change in the accelerometer reading to determine what the person had been
typing.
Overall I
found this presentation to be very good.
The topic was presented in a manner that made it both intriguing and
scary at the same time. The topic was
something I never considered before. The presentation opened with humor but
then turned serious and continued in a serious manner until the end. The material was presented in such a way that
there was not a need to use humor throughout the presentation to keep me
interested, it operated more on the fear factor approach. Throughout the presentation, slides were used
to present important material in an effective manner to keep people
interested and emphasize important points. The presentation did not
really include questions but it did not need to because the topic in itself was
interesting.
