What About Security?

The Internet is not a safe place to spend time these days – and I don’t mean that in the MySpace/To Catch a Predator sense. I mean that it’s full of hackers, crackers, spammers, virus writers, and phishers looking to do the average user no good at all.

Most people know they need antivirus software, and might know they need antispyware apps, too. Some know about phishing, but don’t always know how to distinguish it from legitimate customer service emails. The reason? It’s complicated and people don’t have time (or the technological expertise) to understand it all, especially in a fast-changing security environment. As a result, we have legions of compromised PCs, botnets, and DDoS attacks.

Any device connected to the Internet therefore needs to take security seriously and wireless digital picture frames are no exception.

That said, though, could serious security problems arise with wireless photo frames?

The most obvious security threat is a hacker taking over a frame and showing whatever they want on it. The effects of this range from the relatively minor – annoying or offensive photos put on display – to the destructive –making frames unusable in the future.

Hackers could also compromise a user’s wireless frame account through the frame’s web management interface. This could lead to the problem noted above, to purchases made without a user’s authorization. This could also lead to a compromise of other personal data, but all of this is more an issue of web server security than a frame security.

It’s possible that frames could be attacked by viruses and spam. While spam would certainly be annoying, viruses might be less likely, since there will be less available information about the embedded systems running frames than there is about computer operating systems.

Since most frames are controlled by web interfaces, it’s less likely that a frame could be used as an entryway into taking over a PC. It’s possible, of course, but would likely require a series of less-likely cascading security vulnerabilities in the frame, the browser, and the PC.

The larger fear, of course, is the attacks that have not yet been invented. There are bound to be some of these and frame makers and customers don’t want a repeat of the (perhaps apocryphally) mobile phone virus that places long distance calls to the financial benefit of the virus writer.

While the security exposure of wireless frames is, for now, relatively small, wireless frame companies should take an aggressive stance on security to make sure that the problems that bedevil PCs are minimized on frames.