lights – Social Blog

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Internet of things, smart cities. All these futuristic concepts that we read about in books and articles are still vague concepts for most of us. While we understand what the technology will eventually enable us to do, we miss the finer details about how exactly such technology will come about. The answer is quite simple, well sort of.

Explain the technology

Signify, a Philips spinoff company focused on lighting, has been the market leader in producing LED lights for the past few years. Recently they launched BrightSites, a new smart lighting pole that has the capabilities to integrate IoT applications, cameras, environmental sensors, connectivity, and of course, provide energy-efficient LED lights. The light poles also serve as alarm systems that can detect unusual activity by monitoring noise, air quality and more.

What’s more interesting, is how these smart poles can become a source of income for municipalities. BrightSites poles come with display screens which can be used as advertising space to fund the maintenance of such projects.

About the progress: Signify

Their current cooperation with New York allows them to install smart light posts across the city. By 2025 they aim to install 500,000 posts and are currently already halfway there. This project is intended to build the foundations for the future of smart cities. New York municipalities are piloting a program to create smart cities with smart streetlights that will lower emissions, cut energy usage and at the same time create a foundation for other smart city endeavors. Such projects are being piloted across multiples cities across the world but what is the potential impact?

What it will enable us to do

From a community perspective, the conversion of existing light poles into LEDs, provides a better infrastructure for all communities in the municipalities, reduces the use of energy, the negative impact on the environment, and saving money for the taxpayers. For the citizens, it ensures quality of infrastructure in all neighborhoods and extra safety.

Next steps

Smart light poles could be the solution that brings together the foundations of futuristic smart cities. Think about it, the basic infrastructure in regular light poles is already in place. With few adaptions, these light poles can provide even greater value. Smart lighting utilizes existing infrastructure and converts it into technologically advanced structures that can potentially integrate various other devices to provide you a better experience. Want to charge your electric vehicle? Smart pole got you covered. In need to wifi to call a cab? Smart pole has that too. Potential storm brewing up? The smart poles will be the first to warn you to find shelter.

No ratings yet. What is a botnet?

It is a collection of devices which are all connected to the internet, where each one is running one or more bots (autonomous program). These include any type of device that can be controlled by malware. Most of the time, the owners of these devices do not know that their devices are infected.

But why is this topic becoming more important? With more variety and cheaper devices becoming a part of ‘the internet of things’, there is a larger pool of devices which can be infected. Since many of these devices have very little security, they are easily infected and large networks are quickly made.

So, what can the hackers do with these botnets? They can take down websites with large DDoS attacks (you may have experienced these playing online games), that take down the servers by flooding their bandwidth using botnets. Secondly, they can commit click fraud, where advertisers online are led to believe people are clicking their ads. This could ultimately destroy the internet advertising model. Furthermore, they can use these their botnet network to mine bitcoins (and earn a considerable amount of money doing so).

However, another type of attack is equally frightening. The smart-LED-light system from Philips, the Philips Hue is just as vulnerable to attacks as any other device connected to the internet. These Hue lights allow the user to control their lights via the internet, with a lot of different functions. With more people adopting these type of technologies (myself included) large scale attacks can have serious effects.

Researchers from Canada were able to remotely hack hue bulbs from a distance of 70 meters using botnets, allowing them to control them. Not only is this something you obviously do not want as a consumer, but it can seriously damage an electrical grid of a densely populated area. This was all done with equipment only costing a few hundred dollars. Although the researchers worked together with Philips to improve their system, similar attacks may follow.

The Hue lights are only one aspect of a smart house. When more devices are added to your house for convenience, a hack can do a lot more damage. As a consumer who enjoys these technologies a lot, I am left to trust these large companies to improve their software to keep me protected. But to what extent can these technologies put me at risk? Are you willing to trade the risk of being hacked for the reward of “super cool lights”?

https://www.technologyreview.com/s/603500/10-breakthrough-technologies-2017-botnets-of-things/

https://www.cnet.com/news/new-study-details-a-security-flaw-with-philips-hue-smart-bulbs/

Smart Poles, Smart Cities

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Botnets and Smart-houses: Attack on Philip’s Hue Bulbs

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