Th3 Core

I don't personally have any IoT devices...yet. But if I did, I'd probably setup a separate router or enable a guest network for them to keep that part firewalled from my real network. The lack of security on these things is amazingly short-sighted.

I wonder if open source hardware initiatives will go anywhere. If there were ways to be able to monitor some of this stuff in public it might help. That's not a cure-all by any means.

I'm not sure it's possible in all cases, but signed, verifiable firmware could help as well.Then we could at least know who to blame then things start hitting the fan.

Reading this it just occurred to me that the drop in concern over privacy has corresponded with the drop in shame as a governor of society's norms.

I use to work with Japanese national, we had a conversation once where he said that the US was a guilt based society and Japan was a shame based society.  At the time I didn't think it was 100% true, there were instances where Americans are ashamed of their behavior.  However, today I think the feeling of individual shame, in the US and the rest of the Western world, is probably at an all time low.  People are less religious than they use to be, those who are religious seem to hand pick faiths that support their desired lifestyles.  People also seek media that enforces their values as appose to  getting the 'established' opinion on a topic as they would in the past.

I am old enough to remember when the average person had two or three skeletons in their closet, these days most people wear their choices on their sleeves.

edit: fixed a homonym

...and now I have an LG TV... and a new router is on order so that I can separate it out into its own network where it can't play with my other toys.

This guy has an awesome guide https://github.com/mjp66/Ubiquiti

$50 - Ubiquiti EdgeRouter X
$100 - Ubiquiti AP-AC-LR Access Point

Follow the step-by-step guide, which is now 100+ pages, and you can use this router and access point to setup physically separate networks on your home network. One for IoT stuff, that can access the Internets, but can't access your other networks. Separate Guest networks with bandwidth throttling. Even a separate network that you might only use for banking or shopping. Very impressed with this one.

I think I posted elsewhere in here where you could use separate routers/switches to achieve this as well. Here you get everything in one $50 box.

But wouldn't I need one access point per network? So for three networks, I still have four devices?

No. The Ubiquiti access point is slaved to the router, and one AP can work for several networks. It's the router that does the work of keeping the different networks apart. So your IoT, guest network and home network WiFi can all run through the one access point. The networks can all can have different SSIDs broadcasting, but you're just accessing that one device.

You'd only want more access points if you wanted to cover a wider area. That would work the same way with the router keeping everything apart.

One thing I did like about these devices is they handle Power over Ethernet (PoE), which means the device doesn't need anything more than a LAN cable attached to it to run. That helps with device placement and mounting as it doesn't need to be near a wall socket for a power cord.

The one take away here for me, is its for less than 1% of society

Agreed.
I consider myself pretty good with these things and I was a bit taken aback by the length of that document. However, given a few hours almost anyone could go through that. It's step-by-step instructions and a lot of screenshots and background information.

The idiot-proof commercial gear is possible for this sort of setup as well. You just need more equipment to do the same thing that this cheaper, yet more complicated, setup will provide.