from simple social engineering attacks such as these. They might also be concerned about
danger to their physical safety should attackers abuse situations like this to affect the function-
ality of their cars, possibly resulting in accidents. Competitors to Tesla may use this situation
to lure car buyers toward their products.
From the perspective of the IoT, cloud platforms that are relied upon by endpoint devices
are likely targets for vandals. Imagine if attackers were able to social engineer the domain reg-
istrar for the SmartThings platform we looked at in Chapter 4 to reroute traffic through their
systems. A compromise such as this could allow the vandals to have all smoke detector alarms
powered by SmartThings to go off at the same time. Another scenario could involve an audio
file being broadcast on a particular manufacturer’s baby monitors, all around the world. IoT
vendors consider possible attack vectors that might be exploited by these threat agents and
make sure they have thought through monitoring requirements that can help them detect
attacks against their cloud platforms and against other partners (such as domain registrars)
they rely upon.
Cyberbullies
According to the 2013 Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance System survey, 15 percent of high
school students in the US had been bullied over the course of the previous year. Given the
prevalence of technology in the lives of kids today, cyberbullying can happen at any time and
be perpetrated by anyone. It can be difficult to trace the source of such bullying since mes-
sages and images can be posted on social media sites anonymously or using a fake identity.
Cyberbullying can lead to lower self esteem and health problems for the victim.
Various government agencies have come together to create a website against bullying,
including cyberbullying, to promote awareness of the issue and to provide a mechanism for
victims to seek help:
In one tragic case, a boy named Ryan Patrick Halligan hanged himself at the age of 13 as a
result of cyberbullying. Ryan was bullied at school because of his learning disabilities and was
teased about an ongoing rumor that he was gay. He became friends with a girl who expressed
interest in him via instant messaging. She later told him he was a “loser” in front of a group
of kids at school. Ryan then began communicating with a friend on websites, and they
exchanged ideas about how to commit suicide based on information they found online. Ryan
sent a message to this friend stating that he had been seriously contemplating suicide, and
killed himself two weeks later. Ryan’s father lobbied for legislation in the state of Vermont
and successfully persuaded the state government to enact a Bullying Prevention Policy Law
and a Suicide Prevention Law (Act 114). Other states have also pushed to enact laws against
cyberbullying based on Ryan’s story.
Unfortunately, there are many other stories like Ryan Halligan’s, and the prominence of
cyberbullying is bound to increase given the amount of access children have to mobile devices
and social media platforms. The cases we see now usually leverage laptops, mobile phones,
email, instant messaging, and Facebook. However, IoT devices such as lighting, connected
226 CHAPTER 7: SECURE PROTOTYPING—LITTLEBITS AND CLOUDBIT