Secure Prototyping—
littleBits and cloudBit
With the announcement of the first-generation iPhone in 2007, Apple single-
handedly disrupted the smartphone industry. From an external viewpoint, the iPhone
announced in 2007 may very well have been the first version of the finished product visible to
the public. However, the initial product idea that eventually led to the iPhone was a touch-
sensitive tablet that would allow users to do away with a physical keyboard. Once Steve Jobs
saw the prototype of the tablet, he decided he wanted to implement the technology on a smart-
phone first.
Prototypes help us think through the relevancy of our ideas by helping us focus our intel-
lectual capacities on the intention of our conceived product. The great thing about creating
prototypes is that the process can help us quickly realize potential roadblocks to the design of
the final product early on. Prototyping, just as in the case of Apple and Jobs, can also help us
test different versions of an idea, which may result in a whole other form factor than what we
originally planned.
There are numerous platforms and kits available that allow individuals to prototype ideas
for IoT products with minimal cost and effort. In this chapter, we are going to focus on the
littleBits platform since it is one of the simplest and most elegant prototyping solutions in the
market. The littleBits module includes magnets that can be snapped together like LEGO
bricks, which allows us to construct a prototype in mere seconds. We will use the cloudBit
module to build a simple wireless doorbell that can send alerts via SMS message.
Once we have completed designing our prototype, we will take a look at security issues
that are relevant to the littleBits platform so that we are aware of security controls we will have
to put in place during subsequent iterations of our product prior to production. The goal of
this exercise is to simulate real-world processes companies go through, from initial prototype
to production, so we can think through how to embed security controls at the right times.
SECURE PROTOTYPING—LITTLEBITS AND CLOUDBIT 189CHAPTER 7