New Scientist reports: When is a smart city not so smart? With cities worldwide racing to adopt technologies that automate services such as traffic control and street lighting, many aren’t doing enough to protect against cyberattacks.

That’s according to security researchers who have hacked into countless pieces of city infrastructure, from ATMs to power grids, looking for weaknesses.

One such researcher is Cesar Cerrudo of security consultancy IOActive Labs, based in Seattle. Inspired by how hackers switched traffic lights at will in Die Hard 4.0, Cerrudo decided to see if he could do the same to a smart traffic control system in use around the world. He found that the devices didn’t use any encryption or authentication, and he could feed fake data to their sensors from a drone flying overhead.

Cerrudo was so alarmed by his discovery that he joined with others to set up the Securing Smart Cities initiative, which plans to bring together governments, security firms and technology companies. [Continue reading…]