IoT News of the Week, September 15, 2017

Forget pacemakers, now the latest insecure medical device is an infusion pump: Earlier this month we learned that some pacemakers were hacked, requiring updates and doctor’s visits for 465,000 patients. This week brings us news that three infusion pumps that control the flow of drugs and fluids into patients have vulnerabilities. The vulnerabilities could allow an experienced hacker to control the infusion pump, changing the flow of medications. The problems were discovered in Smiths Medical’s Medfusion 4000 Wireless Syringe Infusion Pump. According to this article, Smiths Medical will release a new product version in January 2018 to address the vulnerabilities. In the meantime, hospitals are supposed to assign these devices a static IP address and monitor the traffic going in and out of them. Given that most hospitals don’t have experienced IT staff, this advice probably isn’t too helpful. (Health Security)

London’s search for real-time transit data: I quoted a story a few months back on the London Underground’s experiment with tracking Wi-Fi signals from commuters to find out how people used the transit system. The Underground has now released data on the project, showing how delays impacted systems and more importantly, talking about what such real-time data could allow the organization to do. It’s a nice reminder that getting the data and analyzing it is only the first step. The real benefits come when that new understanding translates into action. (Gizmodo)

Want to build a voicemail server? We made one for our show, and Kevin Tofel has graciously explained how to make your own using Twilio, Python and a Raspberry Pi. Just in case you want to get your hands dirty. (StaceyonIoT)

Be really careful with your connected cameras: Instead of ransomware, extortion is becoming a favored way for hackers to profit off of a company’s vulnerable devices. Right now Netflix and Sony are the victims, with hackers threatening the release of hot content before the official air date, but as this type of attack becomes democratized, imagine what might happen if your connected camera data gets online. Change those passwords! (WSJ)

Some seniors like Alexa: I’ve been trying to get my mom on board with this for a while but she has privacy concerns about Amazon listening in on her life. But being able to save someone a few steps or boost their ability to communicate with loved ones seems so compelling that it’s easy to see why residents in this nursing home are playing with Alexa. (Front Porch Center for Innovation and Wellbeing)

Alexa is coming to your car: This deep overview of how Amazon’s Alexa platform has evolved also covers the future in cars. Yes, Ford announced a partnership with Amazon in 2015, but we’ve seen little from that. Now those skills are updating to Ford cars with the Sync3 platform. BMW and Hyundai are also adding Alexa to their offerings. (Tech Republic)

Microsoft’s Confidential Computing is a big deal: Microsoft basically created a trusted secure computing environment as part of its Azure cloud. Data is processed inside a trusted environment where external code and unauthorized code can’t reach it. It’s a way to put data in a highly secure place without having to worry about your own IT staff handling the security. Instead, Microsoft handles that for you.  (Microsoft)

Why your IoT Project will fail: No fluff in this article, which appears to directly excerpt the lessons from a presentation given by the extremely intelligent Yodit Stanton at the ThingMonk conference this week. Just go read them. (Diginomica)

The US has new guidelines for self-driving cars: Basically, they embrace the idea of light-touch regulation. However, with Congress eyeing laws and the states wanting to take a stake in this fight, there’s a battle brewing over who will get to control how self-driving cars develop. (The Verge)

AT&T has a new IoT platform: AT&T built a new management platform for customers using connected sensors and devices, called Operations Center. The telco worked with Microsoft Azure, and the product is hosted on Microsoft’s cloud and integrated with Microsoft’s database software. The story says Microsoft and AT&T will work together to bring this to market, but since many other enterprise platforms are hosted on Azure, how will competitors to AT&T’s Operations Center view this? (ZDNet)

Consumer AI is boring: This is bad news for those investing in the smart home. Basically, the easy pickings are gone when it comes to applying computer vision and voice recognition. Now it’s time to go after harder problems to really wow the consumer. (Architecht)

What could go wrong here? Researchers at The University of Texas at Austin have created a tattoo that uses graphene and can measure brain waves, heartbeats and more. It’s unclear how the measurements are transmitted from the tattoo to a medical device, but having what is essentially an always-on, wearable sensor tracking your vitals is both useful and the stuff of dystopian nightmares. (Motherboard)

McKinsey on factory automation and robots: This includes some lovely charts and somewhat obvious-but-still-useful takeaways. (McKinsey)

This was the weirdest thing on the internet this week: I know that’s a big statement, but I am prepared to defend it. (Motherboard)