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Internet safety
Course: Internet safety > Unit 1
Lesson 6: Ask Google: How can I keep my devices safe?How can I keep all my smart devices secure?
Let's discuss the importance of securing not just phones and laptops, but also smart devices like light bulbs and switches. These devices can be vulnerable to hacking if not updated regularly. To protect your home network, choose reputable brands that provide security updates and avoid the cheapest options.
To learn more about how you can keep yourself safe while on the Internet, visit: internet-safety.khanacademy.org. Created by Sal Khan.
To learn more about how you can keep yourself safe while on the Internet, visit: internet-safety.khanacademy.org. Created by Sal Khan.
Want to join the conversation?
- How does someone hack a smart lightbulb?!?!?(7 votes)
- A lot of smart devices (including smart lightbulbs) allow someone to connect to them wirelessly, either directly or through your local network. Hackers can connect to them directly by exploiting bugs in the software or through your local network by installing malware on one of your devices.(4 votes)
- light bulbs can be hacked?(6 votes)
- If you mean smart ones, then yes.(3 votes)
Video transcript
- So Mark, so far we've talked a lot about device security and
when we talk about devices at least in my mind, I imagine my phone, I imagine my laptop, a
tablet, maybe a smart watch, but there's actually a much
broader universe of devices, smart devices, you
know, smart light bulbs, things we might put on things
so that we don't lose them. How does that play into this whole notion of device security? Should we just, you know, not worry about the smart light bulb or
whatever else we might buy? Or should that also be
part of the picture? - I worry about smart devices a little bit and the reason is that we've now got, I just scratched myself in shot, comparable power to what was
on the original space shuttle, inside that light bulb,
inside that wall switch. Now, for the most part,
they're not doing that much. They don't have access
usually to your data. You know, if it has a camera or something, that's another issue. But literally for a light
bulb, the biggest concern is that it has access
to your home network. It's on that same wifi with your laptop and your
phone and your tablet, and they may be sharing
sensitive information. So for that reason, what
I tend to do is to not buy the absolute cheapest
light bulb I can find, because those companies, with their very thin profit
margins often don't update that you know, tiny little computer that's inside the light bulb, so it may have vulnerabilities, it may have weaknesses
that hackers can exploit. There are actually a few
examples of that happening. So in this case, what happened is somebody
found a vulnerability affecting millions and
millions of light bulbs and switches and smart
toasters and what have you, and they were able to
get them all to wake up at the same time and to
hit one particular website until that website was overwhelmed and couldn't keep up with the traffic. That's called a denial of service attack. And so by doing that,
they were able to use lots of innocent people's
smart light bulbs and smart toasters to do some real damage. So scary, scary crimes
not affecting the person in the house, but affecting, you know, some victim down the road. Again, the best solution to this is getting devices that
are updated and patched, that do receive those
same security updates that you get on your phone or your laptop. And most of the reputable
brands, you know, certainly the Google
Nest devices, but most of the reputable brands will
have those security updates, so you'll be in a pretty good place there.