Botnets coming soon to a smart home or automated building near you

By Darlene Storm June 04, 2014 At Hack in the Box (HITB) security conference in Amsterdam, Steffen Wendzel, head of Fraunhofer FKIE, presented "Alice's Adventures in Smart Building Land – Novel Adventures in a Cyber Physical Environment"(pdf). This wasn't "just" weaponizing your coffee pot. Brace yourself because Wendzel warned that a new class of botnet is coming. In fact, smart building botnets won’t be used for boring things like denial-of-service attacks or even refrigerators sending spam. Instead he predicts “novel scenarios” like remote access to sensor data for mass surveillance, or remotely locking the building and holding the people inside for ransom. An example of a regional attack might include when heating levels are slightly increased in buildings overnight in order to sell more oil or gas. Full Articl This is something I had not given much thought to but it is certainly plausible what they suggest.