If you fear your potty being held ransom to unscrupulous hackers then you are right to wake up in a cold sweat at night. According to Chicago security firm Trustwave which has figured a way to hack the Bluetooth controller of a Japanese smart toilet.
Granted, there is no immediate threat, but this could be a big problem as we give up our toilet-based freedoms for the chance to remotely control seat temperature or not have to do that whole annoying contortionist turn-around flush maneuver.
Be grateful that there are scientific minds working on these problems of the modern age. But seriously, IoT sounds like it is going to make our lives a living hell if we are not too careful.
“As these technologies become more sophisticated, it opens up a broader spectrum of threats,” Gunter Ollmann, CTO of security firm IOActive, tells Bloomberg, while adding that the proliferation of smart home devices makes it possible “for the bad guys to have permanent entry into your household.” Of course, there is one way to prevent this kind of catastrophe from occurring: Don’t hook your toilet up to the Internet. After all, as much as automation is promising to make our lives easier, we’re pretty sure that we can still handle flushing our toilets by hand without being too inconvenienced.
