Spitballing IoT Security

Wed Oct 26 19:56:34 UTC 2016

Why does everyone think the Master Plan for World Domination has to be Evil? :)

 -mel beckman

> On Oct 26, 2016, at 12:40 PM, Eric S. Raymond <esr at thyrsus.com> wrote:
> 
> Mel Beckman <mel at beckman.org>:
>> I also really like the idea of offering open source options to vendors, many of whom seem to illegally take that privilege anyway. A key fast-path component, though, is in my opinion a new RFC for IoT security best practices, and probably some revisions to UPNP. 
>> 
>> The IoT RFC would spell out basic rules for safe devices: no back doors, no default passwords, no gratuitous inbound connections, etc. It would also make encryption a requirement, and limit how existing UPNP is deployed to prevent unnecessarily exposing vulnerable TCP/UDP ports to the wild. With this RFC in hand, and an appropriate splashy icon for vendor packaging (“RFC 9999 ThingSafe!”), vendors will have a competitive reason for compliance as a market differentiator, whether they deploy with open-source or proprietary code.
> 
> That is a good idea and I am officially adopting it as part of the Evil
> Master Plan for World Domination. :-)
> 
> I may recruit you to help draft the RFC.
> -- 
>        <a href="http://www.catb.org/~esr/">Eric S. Raymond</a>