Given the fact that smart phones are about to eclipse PCs as the King of the digital world, threats against smart devices are garnering increasing attention, and the biggest players in the smart device market are taking an active stance against them.

With all its potential, the Internet of Things has problems.

The single biggest one of these relates to privacy. This came into sharp focus last year when a smart TV producer revealed that their products were always on and could easily record private conversations.

Should it be legal to hack a hacker who is intent on attacking you? It’s an interesting, touchy debate, with powerful opinions on both sides.

On the one hand, hacking is universally regarded as an illegal act, even when conducted in self-defense.

Dahua, a Chinese manufacturer of DVRs and Smart Cameras, has security problems. In fact, on the Dark Web, the company is commonly referenced as building products that are particularly easy to hack, and as such, hackers gravitate to them. In practice, what this means is that Dahua devices make up a disproportionate share of most of the botnets in operation today.

Unless you have kids, you may not have even known about CloudPets, or the MongoDB, much less the recent hack or the shocking lack of security.

Firstly, yes. Smartpets are a “thing.” They are a new type of stuffed toy for small children connected to the internet.

The next big thing is going to be really small, at least if Microsoft has anything to say about it.

They’ve been experimenting with storing data in what some might call the most unlikely of places…DNA.

The process is mind-bendingly complex, but the potential is simply too great to be ignored.

Last week, Amazon’s AWS (Amazon Web Services) suffered an 11-hour outage that resulted in dramatic slowdowns and complete unavailability of more than 100 large internet retailers and a number of the web’s top sites, including Amazon itself, Netflix, Imgur, Reddit and a host of others.

While Cloudflare isn’t a household name, it is one of the titans of the internet, having a massive presence as a reverse proxy service. It provides security and serves optimized content to many Fortune 500 companies and a whole host of smaller ones.

Remember in the ancient past, two years ago, when Ransomware first made its appearance, infecting hospitals and banks?

That’s still happening, of course. But now, the hackers have a new target: mobile devices.
Increasingly, hackers are shifting their attention to smartphones.

Not long ago, the first instance of ransomware was designed to effect Macs. This was greeted with an even mix of shock, surprise and dismay among the ranks of Mac users, and it did a lot to dispel the Mac Mystique.

After all, it has been held as an article of faith that Macs are more secure than their Windows counterparts, and as proof, Mac users commonly held out the fact that their machines didn’t get hacked very often.