YES. Internet of Things: Have We Bitten Off More Than We Can Chew?

“We definitely have a lot of work to do. Any device that has an IP address is vulnerable to tampering,” Robert Siciliano, CEO of IDTheftSecurity.com told NBC News.

The crippling DDoS attack that last week shut down many popular websites, including Twitter, Amazon and Spotify, turned harmless web-connected home devices, such as smart cameras, into cyber soldiers in a “botnet” — a network of “bots.”

That botnet then flooded its target, internet service management company Dyn, sending it artificial traffic that made it impossible to access its customers’ websites.

We had four IoT outlet plugins, controlling nothing more dangerous than bedroom and living room lamps — convenient for having stuff switch on at dusk, and off again around bedtime. But they aren’t secured by any kind of encryption that I’m aware of, and they are “internet facing” for switching when we’re away from home. I knew they weren’t secure, but it didn’t seem as though anyone could do anything worse than switch my nightstand lamp on in the middle of the night.

When I read how hackers conducted Friday’s DDoS, I unplugged all four controllers, because it turns out that hackers can make a botnet — one capable of taking out huge swaths of the internet — out of seemingly anything.