The Diplomat – The U.S. Congress may push forward new legislation around the Internet of Things (IoT) over the next few weeks. Speaking at an AT&T-hosted panel on August 20, executive director of the Cyberspace Solarium Commission, Mark Montgomery, noted that “with the workforce at home [due to the COVID-19 pandemic], household Internet of Things devices — particularly household routers — have become vulnerable,” providing a larger attack surface to the adversary.
In a 2018 report prepared for the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission, SOSi – a private defense contractor – had noted that China remains keenly interested about IoT vulnerabilities, both to secure its own networks but “almost certainly to collect intelligence, conduct network reconnaissance for cyberattacks, and enhance its domestic surveillance powers.”
As the SOSi report also noted, complicating matters is the fact that China seeks to set technical standards for the IoT and has a clear strategy in order to do so, even when American firms are absent from the norm-setting and standardization process.
Article excerpted from The Diplomat. Click here to read the full story.
