Quote:
"Anyone who wants to see this, hit this URL." She held up a sheet of paper with a URL neatly printed on it. She could have used a QR code, but everyone thinks of those as malware vectors. Anything written on a post-it in sharpie was too homely to present any real risk.
A couple of the journos held back, but several loaded it up. She'd already stuck a SIM into her tablet. A second later, she turned it around.
At first, the reporters couldn't figure out what they were seeing. It was a grid, showing low-rez, shakycam video-feeds of surprised looking faces. Their faces. She'd just pwned all their phone cameras and was now receiving a video-stream off of each one.
"The bug that Kitty revealed was part of the Netflix stack, which you'll find in pretty much every browser on earth. It operates inside a framework specified by the World Wide Web Consortium, meaning that it can be zero-click installed on anything with a browser interface, from your thermostat to your car.
"But because it's part of a DRM system that's supposed to protect copyright—to preserve the illusion that Netflix is somehow able to send you a 'stream' that's not an actual ‘download'—it's against the law to tell you that every device you own is sitting out there, waiting to be pwned by the NSA or just a garden-variety creep. That's what Kitty is in jail for: giving a presentation on this issue at a technical conference.
"Just think for a moment about all the things you control with that phone. Any of you have an implanted defibrillator? A bluetooth hearing aid? Think about the mischief I can make now that I control your phone. Lucky for you, I'm nice." She tapped her tablet. "I've just nuked my installation, as well as your Netflix plugins, which'll auto-reinstall the next time you hit their site. Technically, I just committed about twenty felonies. But Netflix? They're in the clear, even if you lose the contents of your bank account and the alarm-code for your house because you got pwned by their plugin.
"And for what? A little light entertainment? Dudes, we are Huxleying our way into the full Orwell."
Go poke around that site. Cool short stories.
