An 11-year-old Shaolin Kung Fu black-belt from Texas stunned an audience of security experts in the Netherlands on Tuesday by demonstrating that anything connected to the Internet of Things (IOT) can be weaponized, even a teddy bear.
Whether it’s information technology, gymnastics, or Shaolin Kung Fu, 11-year-old Reuben Paul knocks it out of the park.
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This kid from Austin, Texas, just stunned a crowd of cybersecurity experts at a conference in the Netherlands by demonstrating how just about anything can be “weaponized” when it’s connected to the Internet.
“From airplanes to automobiles, from smartphones to smart homes, anything or any toy” can be part of the Internet of Things (IOT), Paul said while speaking at the World Forum in The Hague. “From terminators to teddy bears, anything or any toy can be weaponized.”
The 6th grader, who also excels in gymnastics and is the youngest-ever American to earn a Shaolin Kung Fu black belt, put his money where his mouth was. To back up his claims, he presented a teddy bear that connects to wi-fi using Bluetooth technology.
Paul then plugged a small device known as a “Raspberry Pi” into his laptop. The 11-year-old scanned the room for Bluetooth devices, then — “to everyone’s amazement,” according to Agence France-Presse — he downloaded dozens of phone numbers from the cyber security experts gathered in the room.
Then, using a computer language program called Python, Paul hacked into the teddy bear’s system using one of the collected numbers. To hammer his point home, he turned on the toy’s light and recorded a message from an audience member.
“IOT home appliances, things that can be used in our everyday lives, our cars, lights, refrigerators,” Paul told AFP after the conference, “everything like this that is connected can be used and weaponized to spy on us or harm us.”
The wunderkind’s father, information technology expert Mano Paul — while admittedly “shocked” by the types of security vulnerabilities his son is able to expose — says Reuben has been doing this type of thing all this life:
“He has always surprised us. Every moment when we teach him something he’s usually the one who ends up teaching us.”
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Oh, my god! Science fiction turned into science fact. Christ! When will the people running these cyber institutions put a lid on such things? Lets hope that the kid can’t hack into the nuclear missiles placed in strategic areas all over America and lauch them. That child needs to be put under lock and key for the rest of his life.
We should worry when we see the kid carrying a white cat everywhere he goes.
Are you high? The kid is a good guy and even if he turns bad, it’s not the kid, it’s the way technology it is designed or it is made. All the laptops have backdoor from the manufacturer to steal info, independent of OS installed.
anyone who sees the movie Snowden (about Edward Snowden, who revealed that the NSA has been spying on ALL Global digital communications), will already know that the NSA has programs that can activate a laptop or phone’s camera, even if the laptop is off. The kid is just exposing this truth – that we gotta put more safeguards into technology. The kid is not the problem.