Refrigerator discovered to be sending out spam emails

[Nye Bevan]

A fridge has been discovered sending out spam after a web attack managed to compromise smart gadgets. The fridge was one of more than 100,000 devices used to take part in the spam campaign.

Uncovered by security firm Proofpoint the attack compromised computers, home routers, media PCs and smart TV sets. The attack is believed to be one of the first to exploit the lax security on devices that are part of the "internet of things".

The spam attack took place between 23 December 2013 and 6 January this year, said Proofpoint in a statement. In total, it said, about 750,000 messages were sent as part of the junk mail campaign. The emails were routed through the compromised gadgets.

About 25% of the messages seen by Proofpoint researchers did not pass through laptops, desktops or smartphones, it said. Instead, the malware managed to get itself installed on other smart devices such as kitchen appliances, the home media systems on which people store copied DVDs and web-connected televisions.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-25780908

[Sentath]

1. the 'Internet of Things'

Needs to run more secure software.

[Baclava]

2. I talk to my toaster

it never hurts to encourage small appliances

[William769]

4. Ok, I have to ask.

Does it talk back?

[Baclava]

20. I don't understand electrical talk

but a bedtime story never hurts

[uppityperson]

50. It is out on dvd now. One of the weirdest kid movies my kid saw. I didn't know

it was a book too.

[Baclava]

61. the book was written in 1986 - Disch wrote a lot of sci fi, lots of it dark - he was one of my favs

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/ea.cgi?821

[yourout]

9. My small appliance always need encouragment.

[randome]

17. Of course. How else are they going to learn?

[hr][font color="blue"][center]All things in moderation, including moderation.[/center][/font][hr]

[elleng]

3. I'm very happy with my 'dumb' appliances!!!

[Shandris]

36. I hear ya!

I don't think my toaster needs a Facebook account or to check stock quotes. With that in mind, I think I'll just keep it 'dumb'.

I mean yah, it would be nice to be able to make some hot cocoa on the way home from the store, but...its just not worth all the invasive risk for the convenience of saving four minutes.

[PeaceNikki]

5. My terlet signed me up for like 17 mailing lists.

total jerk.

[Jackpine Radical]

21. Yeah, but it was well-paid for ratting you out.

Now it's flush.

[PowerToThePeople]

6. Openned a can of Spam. Of course it is in a refrigerator...

[Wounded Bear]

7. Now I have to be afraid of a refrigerator?!?!

Shit.

[dipsydoodle]

8. Not surprising the washing machine stopped working then.

[Brother Buzz]

16. Is this psycho the same actor?

[dipsydoodle]

19. Yes - Alan Ford

aka East End Thug in that comedy show. He's a good actor. The link you posted was where he played Brick Top in Snatch.

[Brother Buzz]

32. Yes - Snatch

And also I've seen him in Snuff Box.

Thanks for the heads up on The Armando Iannucci Shows . Fun

[dipsydoodle]

35. I've never seen that

in fact I wasn't even aware of it which is odd because I'm UK.

I'll check it out.

[randome]

10. They caught the culprit but are unsure if charges will be pressed.

After all, he's the loneliest repairman in the world and he only wanted to reach out.
[hr][font color="blue"][center]Precision and concision. That's the game.[/center][/font][hr]

[RC]

11. I'm calling bullshit here.

For one, is there even enough memory to store a spam program in an Internet connected refrigerator? Let alone being able to run a program residing in memory? Web connected kitchen appliances are rather specialized devices, so why have full blown computers in them, which is needed to blast out spam? You can install Microsoft Outlook on your computer? Who knew?

[X_Digger]

13. This one runs winodws. 'nuff said.

There's one I saw at Fry's with a BSOD up on it. Not sure if it was XP, XP Embedded, or some variation of win7.

As for how much it requires to send email- opening a socket and sending spam isn't difficult. socket libraries are small; I've seen them as small as 2k of text, pre-compile. Or you could just use the built-in inet.dll and have access to all kinds of services.

[RoccoR5955]

18. If it does, in fact run Windoze

It probably needs to be restarted each and every day, and has to do updates once a month.
What will the reefer do when Windoze crashes, as it normally does, at least a couple of times a year?

[Jackpine Radical]

23. OMG, the Blue Screen of Thaw--

There is a sickly green ichor in the bottom of the veggie drawer, the mushrooms have grown fungi of their own, and the beer is warm.

[X_Digger]

28. XP Embedded runs in a LOT of kiosks, unfortunately.

Usually they're set up to restart on fault, and have the image on a CF card, so reboots are quite fast.

[RoccoR5955]

33. Yeah, fast for XP

is ten minutes.
Not too long for your ice cream to defrost, but what happens when the RAM fails, and you get a BSOD?

[X_Digger]

37. XP Embedded is actually quite fast. Boot in 30-40 seconds from CF.

Imagine XP without all the crap that microsoft includes with a base install. Only the drivers you need, no extra programs, services, or subsystems that you'll never use (I'm looking at you, IPX).

[Glassunion]

42. Gonna call BS on that.

We have 100% solid state XPE boxes that boot in less than 15 seconds. This includes the BIOS post, OS start, log in, and kiosk app start.

[X_Digger]

43. Well, my experience is 6+ years old ;) I'm sure things have gotten faster since then.

[Glassunion]

44. Solid state has come a long way, but is still a bit expensive.

You cannot get a reasonably sized drive without spending a fortune. But man they are fast.

We have kiosk PCs with 0 moving parts. No Disk Drives, no fans, nothing. We can run them in very hot and very cold environments without issue. All of this and it runs using less than 1/3 of the electricity of a regular PC.

[X_Digger]

45. I tried an SSD primary disk a while back, but never got much speed gain.

Of course this was before SATA-3 or whatever the latest standard is, so I don't take it as representative.

I've also got a fanless atom box that I use for microscopy capture / streaming- quite a nice little box.

[Glassunion]

51. With the SSDs today the R/W is amazing.

There was one benchmark test I read about, where they got the latest Apple OS X to boot on a MacBook Pro in 9 seconds using SSD drives.

[Duer 157099]

54. The compressor can also fail, not just RAM

What happens when a compressor fails?

[RoccoR5955]

56. Uh, from what I have observed

RAM fails more frequently than compressors.

[jeff47]

15. Uhhhhh

Let alone being able to run a program residing in memory?

Uh, yeah. The fridge has to run software in order to be "smart".

Web connected kitchen appliances are rather specialized devices, so why have full blown computers in them, which is needed to blast out spam?

You don't need a "full blown" computer to send email. SMTP is very easy, and you're talking about transmitting about 1K of text over and over again.

You don't need a heavy client like Outlook. After all, the fridge won't be displaying or otherwise organizing the email.

Consider this: Computers in the 1960s were sending and receiving email. They had about 1/10th the computing power of a modern calculator.

[Egalitarian Thug]

26. More than enough. One of the unfortunate side effects of microsoftism is the widespread belief

that computer apps have to be huge, bloated, slow, and stupid.

[Glassunion]

40. Some info to perhaps call unbullshit

There is enough memory. Samsung models in particular you can store photo albums, download apps, and even have their own e-mail client built in. Others like Electrolux run on Linux, while others run on Windows. The internet enabled units tend have a decent amount of storage for the user to download apps like Pandora, twitter, etc...

You don't need a full blown computer to blast out spam. Bots can be very small in size, and can flow through spam quite easily. All you need is memory space for the program to run, and a connection to the internet.

[RC]

47. In that case why would anyone want something like that, if they already had a computer?

[Glassunion]

49. Not everyone has laptops or tablets to take into their kitchen.

Growing up, my mom and dad had a small under the counter TV in the kitchen. This is the same concept, but now you can pop on a show from Netflix, or cook right along with a Julia Child video. It would not work in my kitchen as once I'm in my kitchen, in either my prep or cooking areas, I cannot see the front of my fridge.

I no longer have paper recipes. I scanned all of our family's recipes and use my laptop to display them while I'm cooking. Other times, I'll cook right along with a YouTube video. It is handy. The downside, is that I cannot microwave while I have the laptop in the kitchen as it will block it.

The neat thing I can see about a smart fridge, is that you already have a fridge in the kitchen, and if you can add a device without taking up any additional space that would be a plus. Currently the smartest device I have in my kitchen is an old smartphone I use to play Pandora radio. I have a small speaker that I plug it into, then sit it on top of my fridge while I'm cooking. So on a technicality, my fridge has internet radio.

[MineralMan]

12. Wonderful. When everything is connected, everything will send spam.

If it's on the Internet, there is spam of it. A new rule.

[onehandle]

14. Google just bought an interactive thermostat company.

The age of devices delivering spam is about to go crazy.

[randome]

22. Daughter: "Dad, can we turn up the heat?"

Thermostat: "You touch me and you'll be in a world of hurt, young man!"

Dad: "Maybe later."
[hr][font color="blue"][center]"If you're bored then you're boring." -Harvey Danger[/center][/font][hr]

[underpants]

38. HAL: I'm sorry, Dave. I'm afraid I can't do that.

Lmao off at your post

[randome]

57. How'd you know my name was...never mind.

[hr][font color="blue"][center]Treat your body like a machine. Your mind like a castle.[/center][/font][hr]

[RoccoR5955]

24. Yeah, my "smart" coffee pot had to be sent back

The coffee tasted disgusting. Some sort of meat flavor. Maybe it was spam as well!

[DirkGently]

25. But it's nice, cold SPAM, right?

[Egalitarian Thug]

27. LOL!

"Tastes like shit, but you can live on it." - Mick Dundee

[Shrike47]

30. Hey, lay off the national dish of Hawaii!!!

[haele]

29. One of those appliances that are supposed to interact with the smart phones.

The latest and greatest for the "internet home", where you can supposedly text your oven to begin the meals or text your fridge to monitor and maintain special drawers for items you may want kept "just below frozen", or kept cold during the morning but brought at room temperature by the time you get home. Same with security or environmental control units.

If you can use e-mail or text to it, or wirelessly control it through an app, it can spam. That's just the nature of "smart" gadgets that can also communicate over the 'net.

Haele

[RoccoR5955]

34. I want something that can text

my bung hole to know when to flush the toilet too.
This is just getting too unreal!
Why are people getting so damn lazy?
They will forget how to do things when this garbage fails.
I see it every day, as a computer support tech/network guy.
The more problems these bozos have, the more they think that they can throw technology at it to make it better.
Never mind that they can't even spell computers, they just want more.

[Glassunion]

46. Fear not the changes, least they run you over.

[petronius]

41. Although wildly unnecessary, I think it's kind of cool - I'd love to be able

to email my fridge before leaving work:

"Hey fridge, are there any beers left?"
"Hey fridge, is that chicken defrosted yet?"
"Hey fridge, which roommate nicked my last Fudgesicle (and can you please spoil their milk in revenge)?"

[Warren DeMontague]

31. [e-mail]

[underpants]

39. The water/ice dispenser had two rather odd porn choices

Just saying

[Coyotl]

48. I'd like to operate a coffee machine across the room from the keyboard, etc.

Wireless appliance networking has some real pluses, like remote controlling sound systems.

[dlwickham]

52. reminds me of some movie or TV show I saw a while back

I think it was a phone line that hadn't been fully disconnected and was automatically calling this one number and the person whose number it was called the cops because she thought it was someone harassing her and the person who lived at the address where phone line was didn't even know that there was a phone line in his basement

wish I could remember the name of the show

[Glassunion]

53. IIRC there was a Toshiba TV that sent out a Search and Rescue Satellite distress call.

I think it was in Oregon if my memory is correct.

[klook]

58. "Help! They watch American Idol every @#$%in' week!" (n/t)

[dembotoz]

55. send the offending fridge to the cooler

[klook]

59. "Hey, anybody know how all this Nigerian food got in here?" (n/t)

[Beacool]

60. The only Spam in my refrigerator is the canned variety.

Naahh, just kidding. I don't eat the stuff.