Knowing how rapidly the Internet of Things is finding space in human life and revolutionizing it, it could be the next best target for the hackers too. With devices starting from baby cams to home security systems, toasters, thermostats, smart light bulbs and even the pacemakers, all governed by some network, the hackers have a potential target of all kinds of personal data.
Tor Project has come up with a plan to protect Internet of Things devices. Teaming up with the Guardian Project and taking the help of a Home Assistant, Tor Project is aiming to develop a beefed up security system that will act as a channel between the IOT device and user. Effectively, Tor Project is looking to replace the conventional public network with a secure Tor network.
“The Tor Project wants Tor privacy technology to be integrated into everyday life so that people don’t have to log on to it—their privacy and security are built in. Nathan’s work with Home Assistant is an early but important milestone,” said Shari Steele, Tor’s Executive Director.
Onion site makes it difficult for hackers to detect
Users on Tor Network would just need a Raspberry Pi device to run the Home Assistant software, a free, open-source platform built on Python. Home Assistant would then run a Tor configuration, setting up a special Onion site on the device.
Onion sites do not have a real domain name or IP address that exists on the “regular” internet. The TOR network arranges anonymity for the server and its visitors and rebound the signals across the globe, making it almost impossible to detect where a user is connecting.
Commenting on Tor Project plan to protect IOT devices, Nathan Freitas, Executive Director of the Guardian Project, says,
“Too many ‘Things’ in our homes, at our hospitals, in our businesses and throughout our lives are exposed to the public Internet without the ability to protect their communication. Tor provides this, for free, with real-world hard ended, open-source software and strong, state of the art cryptography.
Tor has developed a way to build a buffer of privacy network between the IOT device and user. Hackers looking for hackable, single point of failures at user network will have to contend with the global network of thousands of Tor nodes making it almost impossible for them to find the right leak.
