Back in June 2008 I noted Craig Wright had posted to bugtraq reporting a “remote exploitation of an information disclosure vulnerability in Oral B’s SmartGuide management system”. I found it faintly amusing that a security researcher should have been looking for vulnerabities in a toothbrush.
I should have known better.
A report in wednesday’s on-line Guardian points to the release of a new smart tootbrush from Oral B. Apparently that toothbush will link via bluetooth to an app on either an iPhone or Android and report back to your dentist. It seems that Oral B “sees the connected toothbrush, launched as part of Mobile World Congress’s Connected City exhibition, as the next evolution of the smart bathroom.” Wayne Randall, global vice president of Oral Care at Procter and Gamble reportedly said:
“It provides the highest degree of user interaction to track your oral care habits to help improve your oral health, and we believe it will have significant impact on the future of personal oral care, providing data-based solutions for oral health, and making the relationship between dental professionals and patients a more collaborative one.”
That’s just great. GCHQ have plenty of other personal data feeds already without giving them access to our bathrooms.
2 comments
Well, the Internet Of More Things Than Are Already Connected One Way Or The Other (short form “Internet of Things”) is going to make life even more difficult, but it’s not just the “IT behind the scenes” that is a concern right now. There are also some more overt devices that have a MUCH wider use than people seem to realise.
Imaging this typical scene in, say, a US crime movie where they are tracking Bad Guys(™). They move into a street without coverage, so surveillance is tasked to provide “eyes” (sorry about all the quotes, but that seems to be the jargon).
If the world fills up with Glassholes, the scene can be rewritten thus:
– locating Glasshole in proximity of target
– remote enabling Glasshole device
– zooming in on scene
Given that these things already support geo-location, it’s only waiting for a wider distribution. The capability is already there, and I have as yet to invest any trust in Google when it comes to being “unsupportive” of US needs..
On a related note, if it ever comes, at least the acronym for the ID Internet Of Things (readers etc) is going to be accurate :).
Author
Peter
“If the world fills up with Glassholes” et seq. would read slightly better if you dropped the “Gl” bit.
Mick