Original story

The Times ONLINE 25.10.2005

Uproar in new suburbs after datanet vandals reprogram home control systems

Home environment control systems in several dwelling areas on the outskirts of Milton Keynes will be disconnected from the public networks after hacking break-ins by apparently well-organized groups of vandals.

Milton Keynes, Friday

Computer viruses and hackers breaking through datanet security firewalls have tested the patience of residents in several of the new suburbs featuring fully automated ambient control. The city worst affected has been the industrial new town of Milton Keynes in Buckinghamshire, originally developed in the late 1960s, and the home of the Open University. Milton Keynes was among the first locations to introduce such “smart housing” in suburbs such as Stonyfield, Llewelyn, and Uffington, added during the late 1990s. The property control networks were at the time hooked up - at the demand of the residents - to the public nets. Consequently, the people living in these areas have been able to monitor and direct their properties from their workplace or while travelling. In the light of the obvious breaches of security that have occurred in recent weeks, the decision is about to be reversed.

Residents have complained that their portable remote control devices are periodically going completely haywire, and issuing absurd commands to the house’s system. When the owner enters a room in the building, the music stops and the lighting fades down to a bare glimmer. The door speakerphone chats happily (and often highly embarrassingly) to visitors who call when the owner is away, instead of hooking up the caller to the residents’ mobile videophone. Toilets flush and baths fill at all hours, entire central heating systems switch off in February with no warning, fire alarms leap into action without the slightest provocation, and the cooker turns itself on even when the family is away for the weekend.

As he deposited a mangled piece of electrical equipment in his dustbin, one red-eyed householder in Stonyfield reported wearily that the previous night he had had to remove all the light-bulbs individually in order to be able to sleep. This was not enough, however, for at 4.30 am his video-CD wall had erupted into life with a screening of Armageddon II. Finally, in desperation, he silenced Bruce Willis with a sledgehammer. He went on to say that he was grateful for the small mercy that his house did not have closed-circuit control cameras. He was, he said, willing to allow hackers the doubtful pleasure of prying into the contents of his refrigerator - the mains supply to which was fortunately not routed through the data system - but the idea of surveillance cameras running amok in the bedrooms and bathrooms was too much to think about.

The technical design and installation of the Stonyfield and Uffington systems was in the hands of LON Automatica of Cambridge. Marcus Jones, head of security for the company, said that the system is basically well firewalled, but that the residents themselves have brought the trouble on their own heads.

“What has happened here is that the householders have been careless and have downloaded viruses into their own data systems, and these have been able to spread outwards and infect the entire control network. Then by picking up and reproducing the residents’ own passwords the viruses have had no trouble collecting the codes they require to take command of the control system. On top of this, some of the viruses have been programmed to distribute passwords to hackers on the outside. Things can only be brought back on an even keel by closing the viruses and the hackers out of the system. This will take us a day or two at least, and we shall have to shut down the entire network. Naturally we can’t get started on the clean-up job before we get in touch with all the residents, because all doors and all the other automated functions will have to be reset to manual first.”

At least in Stonyfield, the awkward situation has led to a very strained atmosphere between neighbours, with residents suspecting one another of being responsible for allowing the initial viruses to infiltrate the system. Many are even keen to see the back of automatic ambient and climate control. They are fed up with the unreliabilty of the system, and with the fact that their next-door neighbours seem to care nothing for matters of data protection.

Hannula I. & Linturi R. 1998: 100 Phenomena. Yritysmikrot Oy, Helsinki 1998. Copyright notices ISBN 952-9508-18-2

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