IoT News Weekly – June 3, 2022
Brought to you by: IoTSecure
Thank you for tuning it today to the second of our IoT News Weekly series, I am your host John Nye, and let’s get into the news
Industrial IoT is at in the news this week when the Swiss-based IoT Asset Tracking company, Astrocast, acquired its European rival, Netherlands based Hiber. While exact numbers were not released, based on the figures that are available Hiber was purchased at a valuation of almost $412 million.
Both companies are heavily focused on IoT and large asset tracking via IoT devices. Hiber was known for providing tracking solutions to industrial companies with a satellite-based tracking service that allowed customers to track and monitor assets in remote locations. Their primary customers fall into oil and gas, mining, agriculture, and forestry. Astrotrack expects this acquisition to help them break into the industrial markets and get greater use of their satellites.
An IoT manufacturer that has been making headway in the European market is called Hanshow. They make Electronic Shelf labels for supermarkets and other retailers that can be adjusted automatically and as often as needed. This week they announced a new platform called All-Star. That is designed to help brick-and-mortar retail into the modern digital age. The new platform expands on the electronic shelf label platform to create truly efficient stores and markets. The All-Star platform is designed to elevate customers in-store experiences, as well as detailed functions to help managers take control of pricing and inventory management, picking, geolocation, dynamic pricing, promotions, interactive marketing, and digital payments among others.
Faraday Technology Corporation, a leading ASIC design and IP solution provider, announced a new security subsystem called Soteria. This new subsystem is to be implemented on their new System on a Chip or SOC called SoCreative!VI. According to their press release, “Faraday’s Soteria! subsystem contains an immutable boot ROM, an embedded processor, security hardware engines (AES, HMAC, RSA, TRNG, CRC, SYSC), and customized modules to enable secure boot authentication, cryptographic algorithms, device authentication, secure communication, and security monitoring functions. By adopting Faraday’s one-stop-shop security solution, including security IP integration and system software solution, customers can ease the secure SoC development process.”
Source: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20220531005008/en/
QleanAir, a company known for providing technical solutions to help maintain clean air, launched its IoT-platform called QleanAir Connect. This new platform is the next step they can take to help their customers better understand and improve air quality within their organizations. While smaller offices only use one or two air purifying units, larger operations, such as warehouses, event venues, and production facilities, will often have dozens or more units running simultaneously. The QleanAir Connect system will allow customers to monitor air quality in real-time to ensure safe air quality for all parts of the organization.
One of the pioneers in IoT-based supply-chain management, Surgere, launched a new warehouse management platform for US-based manufacturer Hutchinson North America. The new RFID technology launched by Surgere is a new IoS-based application that connects to their patented Iterius system. The Iterius IoS application works with Surgere’s handheld RFID readers to allow data collected by the RFID readers to be gathered on IOS devices.
The goal of the new application is to reduce the time taken by Hutchinson for the previous manual input process and provide them with real-time inventory visibility. They also say that this new system will enhance the companies visibility into their raw materials, works in progress, finished goods, inventory management and outbound shipping stats helping to alleviate asset loss and associated costs.
On June 1st Security Researchers at Forescout created a proof-of-concept ransomware attack that has serious implications for IoT and OT technology. In the research Forescout’s Vedere labs showed that they could attack this hypothetical victim using a vulnerable IP camera to compromise the IT infrastructure and use that access to shut down Operations Technology (OT) hardware.
The attack began with the compromise of the IP Security cameras in use. In this case they chose to attack cameras sold by Axis and Hikvision because these two manufacturers represent 77% of the IP cameras in use on enterprise networks today. There are over half a million of these cameras online today that are using the default VLAN1 configuration making them vulnerable to known attacks. So using a widely available exploit called Devil’s Ivy, from 2017, malicious actors can gain access to the cameras. From there is it just a mater of time to escalate priviliages and wreak havock within the network.
“Forescout’s video demonstration featured a simulated ransomware attack against a hospital. In this example, Forescout accessed an IP camera, used it to gain access to the fictional hospital’s network, gained access to the camera, spotted a programmable logic controller used to control a hospital’s HVAC system, and used escalated privileges to install ransomware and shut down the HVAC.”
One of IoTSecures market competitors, ORDR, announced another large funding round this week. As part of ORDRs series C funding round Battery Ventures and Ten Eleven Ventures have added $40 million to their coffers bringing their overall funding raised to $90 million. According to the press release this funding comes just as more organizations are in need of better support in identifying, managing, and securing connected devices like IoT, OT, and IoMT.
IoTSecure, our startup that offers similar connected device management has intentionally avoided taking large sums of investor money so that we can maintain a heavy focus on the best possible solution for the best possible prices. If you are interested in ORDR’s offerings we challenge you to compare their solution to ours and expect to hear from you soon.
Source: https://venturebeat.com/2022/06/01/ordr-iot-monitoring/
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