LABScon25 Replay | Please Connect to the Foreign Entity to Enhance Your User Experience
Brief
In this LABScon 25 presentation, Joe FitzPatrick explores how networked devices manufactured overseas have quietly become indispensable to everything from small-business prototyping labs to roadside infrastructure. He argues that the safeguards meant to manage the risks these devices introduce are, in practice, largely ineffective.
Starting with recent reports of undocumented cellular radios found in solar inverters used in U. S. highway infrastructure, Joe notes that adding that kind of connectivity to a device with an exposed serial port takes minutes and can be done by anyone: the manufacturer, the installer, or someone who came along later.