Can Smart Cities Be Hacked?

We were promised flying cars and so far we have traffic lights that change color. With that thought I kick off the channel’s monographs, this time devoted to so-called intelligent cities, those smart cities that sound better in English. I’m a complete layman on the subject, so I’m joined by someone who does know.

He is Ernesto Sánchez, alias Xloath, ethical hacker at GMV, twenty years in the field, a speaker at RootedCon, Navaja Negra and NoConName and a columnist at IT Warrior, specialized in hardware and radio communications. With him I go over why so many deployments are born insecure (they get awarded to the cheapest bidder) and how far the problem of access to the radio spectrum really reaches. He tells how he investigated rental scooters, which can be stopped dead over Bluetooth with a very real physical risk, and he brings a few myths back down to earth: rigging the electricity meter or the bus card doesn’t get you very far. In Zaragoza more than a hundred people ended up arrested for topping up their own transport balance.

We also talk about traffic lights, drones, GPS that can be spoofed and even the Boston Dynamics robot dog, which for now only serves beers. A conversation to understand what a smart city really is and why security has to be thought about from the design stage.