[Freedombox-discuss] freedombox & blackhats

[Thomas Lord]

Hacker News brought an interesting link today:

http://blog.andrewcantino.com/post/3565673304/why-plug-computers-are-a-security-nightmare

The gist is that if blackhat hackers can penetrate your 
environment and stealthily install some plug computers -
loaded with suitable software - those bugs would be
hard not notice, could sniff your wireless traffic (or,
if connected, your network), and can stealthily move that
information back towards the blackhat mothership.

Which is nothing new.  People have known about that kind
of thing of years.  Trends in plug computing make the 
threat cheaper to execute and easier to conceal - that's
the main thing.

After reading that I was thinking what this meant
to Freedombox.   I came up with two items:

1. The network hardening and stealth communications 
ambitions of FreedomBox might *also* be a boon to
blackhat applications.   That might give some people
and organizations incentive to interfere with or 
corrupt those aspects of FreedomBox development.

2. If it is born out that such features are an important
new security threat, presumably there will be investment
in R&D to create and sell counter-measures to FreedomBox-style
mesh networking, tunneling, etc.

To be clear: I don't see anything that "needs to be done"
in response to these speculated problems other than,
perhaps, to keep them in the back of our minds.

-t