http://www.zdnet.com/article/ransomware-for-robots-is-the-next-big-security-nightmare/#ftag=RSSbaffb68
The article title is a bit sensationalist, however the story is amusing.
Researchers were able to create ransomware that infects humanoid robots produced by Softbank robotics. When infected, the robot ceased normal functionality and would proceed to taunt the audience and demand bitcoin as a random. While mainly a POC to demonstrate the risk and exposure present in robotics, the amusing demo should be taken as a warning. Like much of the IoTs, Robots will soon be connected online and handle varying levels of personal data. With a growing focus on the weakeness in internet connected devices, robotics should not be left out of the conversation.
I agree this should be seen as a warning because ransomware is no joke and glad this was done early so we can expect some things in the future but the story is amusing lol.
Good post Kevin. What’s really scary about it (I think) is that it is going to become easier and easier to do this given that there are ‘tons’ of open source platforms and frameworks that are just now starting percolate thru git -like ROS, Microsoft Robotics Developer Studio, Orca, etc., etc, etc.
I’m certainly no expert here but I’d think that without these emerging platforms, bad actors would need to learn, understand and master all of the gory details of some pretty low level device interactions – requiring a lot of unique hardware engineering awareness and programming interface skills. The point being that very few bad actors would think it worth their investment of time to pursue.
And if that were the case,(i,e. the lack of deep engineering skills needed to build successful exploits), those kinds of attacks would simply get relegated into corner case attacks sponsored by nation states (again in my opinion).
But now that all of the ‘low level’ device specific complexity can just be abstracted away with an SDK it will make it soooooooo much easier for anyone with the right tool kit to do that sort of stuff. Yikes!;)