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This paper investigates the long-term risks associated with smart devices, focusing on the example of a smart fridge. The authors model the IT ecosystem required for various fridge use cases and analyze potential risks to the operational lifespan of each component. They find that even basic functions like cooling are vulnerable due to dependencies on external IT components not controlled by the user.
Your smart fridge might stop cooling because of a software update on a server you don't even know exists.
Replacing conventional devices with smart ones has many advantages, e.g., a seamless integration of physical objects into the users digital environment or improved modes of use. However, if a conventional device is replaced by a smart device, its IT components can cause risks, that shorten the life of the device. Such risks stem from different life cycles of embedded soft- and hardware, libraries and protocols used, and the IT ecosystem required. This is problematic, because many conventional household appliances, say, a fridge or TV, have a much longer life span than typical IT equipment. In this paper, we use a systematic approach to identify long-term risks for the operational life span of a smart fridge. In particular, we identify 8 different use cases of three typical smart fridges, e.g., cooling or managing"best before"dates. We model the IT ecosystem needed to run these use cases, and we inspect each asset in this ecosystem for potential long-term risks. We found that even cooling, the most basic use case, is at risk in the long run. This is because the setting cooling parameters may depend on parts of the IT ecosystem that are not under the users control. On the other hand, we did not find any risk that may lead to harm of the category"threatening". Our findings on the smart fridge can be generalized to other smart devices easily.
