Yesterday, on 23rd January 2019, I delivered my first lecture (titled: “Course Overview”) between 8:15 am – 10:00 am part of the Information Security course at Malmö University.  This is the third academic year that I am running this exciting course at Bachelor’s level.

Different to the previous years, this time the course material will be published on Canvas (instead of itslearning), officially I am the course responsible, and the amount of students enrolled on this course exceeds 150 students! This is almost double the amount of students I had two years ago! Indeed, this is very satisfying as a tutor to have so many students that recognise the increasing importance of information security!

One of the key points, I mentioned is how the sophistication of attacks is increasing especially since the introduction of Internet of Things (IoT) enabled technologies.

A particular instance of this are attacks being carried out remotely, for instance through the help of drones (war-flying). As a demonstration of this in the clip below, researchers exploit a ZigBee vulnerability (by delivering a malicious Over The Air update) forcing smart Hue light bulbs to flash S.O.S in distress.

What attacks should we expect in the future? Certainly, I would expect to see more of the above and increasingly more autonomous attacks potentially targeting SCADA/ICSs and smart cities causing blackouts and more. Possibly such attacks can be permanent and have irreversible consequences.