Robots: Lots of features, not much security

Robots are supposed to do good things for us, not bad things to us.

But there is plenty of evidence that, like the billions of other connected devices that make up the Internet of Things (IoT), the growth of robot technology is coming with loads of features, but not much of a security blanket.

More evidence came in a report on home, business and industrial robots released last month by security research firm IOActive, which found that “most” of them lacked what experts generally call “basic security hygiene.”

Those included the predictable list: Insecure communication channels, critical information sent in cleartext or with weak encryption, no requirement for user names or passwords for some services, weak authentication in others, and a lack of sufficient authorization to protect critical functions such as software installation or updates.

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