This is a post related to the one I put up about FDA hiring ethical hackers to assess the vulnerabilities of medical devices. Smart home gadgets in many ways are similar to medical devices because they often feature embedded systems, which are fundamental in IOT devices. These are systems that need to be fast and efficient in their memory management. These devices tend to utilize lower level languages, such as C or even Assembly, which are highly prone to segfaults, memory leaks, and other issues that high level languages abstract away. These vulnerabilities can be attacked by hackers without too much difficulty because little things will cause entire programs to crash and burn. Therefore, I think it’s a good thing that the UK is creating some guidelines for securing home gadgets.
https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-45863948?intlink_from_url=https://www.bbc.com/news/topics/cz4pr2gd85qt/cyber-security&link_location=live-reporting-story