Your city's not smart if it's vulnerable, says hacker
"Real world hacker" Cesar Cerrudo has blasted vendors, saying they're stopping security researchers from testing smart city systems, and as a result they're being sold with dangerous unchecked vulnerabilities.
The warning will be detailed at RSA San Francisco this week, and comes a year after the IOActive chief technology officer found some 200,000 vulnerable traffic control sensors active in cities like Washington DC, London, and Melbourne.
Vendors don't want their kit tested, Cerrudo said, although there are now 25 major cities across the world taking the lead in deployment, such as New York, Berlin, and Sydney. In An Emerging US (and World) Threat: Cities Wide Open to Cyber Attacks (pdf), the hacker warns that attack surfaces in smart city technology are plentiful given its complexity and integration with legacy systems, and says the woeful security shortfalls with internet-of-things devices are creeping into city tech.
