Keynote Address: Web-Enabled Gadgets: Can We Trust Them?

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Presented at 10th USENIX Security Symposium 2001 by

Richard Smith

The new frontier for consumer electronic devices is the Internet. We are now seeing devices for the home--TV digital recorders, digital picture frames, two-way cable settop boxes--that offer new levels of convenience by connecting to Internet services. But can we trust these devices in our homes? Will manufacturers use them to collect even more data about us for marketing purposes? Will the Internet connections control how we are allowed to use these products? Will security holes in these devices create new backdoors for breaking into our home PCs? Richard Smith will try to answer these questions about this brave new world of consumer electronic devices. Much of the talk will be based on research conducted by the Privacy Foundation on the first wave of Web-enabled devices such as Tivo, UltimateTV, and digital picture frames.