What Oct 21’s Internet Shut Down Really Means

[Commentary] When a slew of websites couldn’t be reached Oct 21, suddenly people across the US started paying attention to the Internet of Things. It turns out that tens of millions of digital video recorders and other devices connected to the internet and protected only by factory-encoded, easily-brute-force-guessable passwords can be harnessed in the service of gigantic distributed denial-of-service attacks. When those devices were instructed to send huge numbers of messages to computers providing pointers to some very popular websites, the computers on the receiving end were brought to their knees—incapable of processing any requests. Without the directional signs in place, suddenly huge numbers of sites couldn’t be found. Who knew the Internet of Things could have such a big effect on our daily lives? Actually, a lot of people knew.

IoT is very big business these days.While we’re patching those insecure home DVRs, routers, and webcams, let’s back up and talk about the implications of IoT for public values generally. Because it’s not just websites that could be affected by unrestrained Internet of Things deployments. We’re not just using IoT in our homes. We’re also going to be using it, in a big way, in the places where 80 percent of Americans live, work, and play: in cities.

[Susan Crawford is the John A. Reilly Clinical Professor of Law at Harvard Law School and a co-director of the Berkman Center.]