Weakness in Philips Smart Bulb Hack Not a ZigBee Flaw, Alliance Says
The ZigBee Alliance is in “continuous communication with its member companies to develop and maintain its suite of market-relevant standards for the IoT,” the alliance emailed us Tuesday following a report last week of researchers using Philips Hue smart light…
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bulbs as the on-ramp for a staged distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack. The study described adjacent IoT devices infecting each other with a “worm that will spread explosively over large areas in a kind of nuclear chain reaction." An infected bulb could “catastrophically spread” throughout a smart city within minutes, it reported, “in a massive DDoS attack.” The test found a bug in an Atmel circuit. “Like many technology platforms, such as smartphones and our daily computing devices, there’s a constant need to keep software current and check for updates to ensure the security of devices and system solutions." Atmel didn't respond to a request for comment. Last month, DDoS attacks affected many popular websites and led to calls for government action (see 1610260067).