https://hacked.com/hackers-find-way-remotely-switch-smart-sniper-rifles-target/

Now, as a rule, I am all for pushing technology forward.  Building new things, breaking sh*t, changing the way that people think about pretty much everything.  Forward is good.

But incautiously forward is becoming the norm.  While there are hundreds of companies pushing forward the idea of IoT (Internet of Things), they are all, almost invariably, following the “MPB” model (minimum playable build).  The idea behind the MPB is to get your product to market first, start establishing your user base, let your consumers become your testers and thereby get them to buy in to your product.  After all, it’s their suggestions and requests that you are taking and implementing, so they now have some skin in the game.

The problem arises when security gets involved.  When you have a user base of ten or a thousand, you’re often not big enough to attract attention from any serious hackers.  So it’s easy to get lax on security for the sake of time to market.  You can fix it after the fact, right?  But as your development teams turn over and new faces replace the old, those security flaws (which you knew about but planned to fix once you were a viable product, really) get layered over.  They get forgotten, or you hope they never get noticed.

The thing about the kinds of people who hack a system, they love to know sh*t. If you get cool enough or big enough, they’re going to take a look.  They’re going to want to pop the hood to see if your programmers really did something really slick in there, or if it’s a train wreck in a shiny plastic housing.  The flaws will be found out, and if you’re lucky, you were hacked by an ethical bunch, who will be happy to take their turn deconstructing you at Black Hat and may (if paid) help you to fix those flaws before someone gets hurt.