Ken Munro, partner at Pen Test Partners, is continually testing the security of IoT devices and recently found that some types of internet-connected thermostats are vulnerable to attack.
This means an attacker could take control of these devices and potentially trigger hundreds of thousands of heating or cooling systems in the same area to come on at the same time.
“That would be an enormous drain on the power grid, and it doesn’t take much to push a power grid into an overload situation, causing shutdowns, ” he told delegates at IPExpo at Excel, London.
