With all puns intended, it looks like the movie Godzilla is turning into a monster hit.  It recently received some additional publicity not from studio public relations people, but from hackers in San Francisco who hacked into an electronic road sign and reprogrammed it to read “Godzilla Attack!”  Fortunately, as would expected, there was no panic, but rather only bemusement, however the ease with which so many of the electronic devices we use and now call the Internet of Things can be hacked is creating the potential for great harm as cars, refrigerators, heating systems and other smart devices become sources of identity theft and worse.

TIPS

A large part of the problem is that the makers of such electronic devices just do not do enough to provide for security in these devices.  In the case of electronic road signs, most are controlled by control pads in a lock box on the sign.  Most are password protected, but most of those just use the default password of “DOTS” and those that have other passwords can have the password changed merely by holding the shift key and the control key while typing “DIPY” which will revert the password back to “DOTS.”  To make things worse, most of these lock boxes aren’t even locked.  Hopefully, the manufacturers and operators of these electronic road signs and other smart devices will pay greater attention to security soon.