The Week in Review: IoT

Cybersecurity
Cybersecurity concerns continued to generate news this week. Symantec reported a corporate espionage hacking campaign against manufacturers of medical supplies, dubbing the efforts “Orangeworm.” The hackers have attacked 24 or more targets this year, and almost 100 since 2015, according to the security software and services firm.

Meanwhile, the House Energy and Commerce Committee is seeking inputs about preventing cyberattacks on medical devices and systems. The committee would like to know if vendors can update legacy devices or will it be necessary to swap out existing devices for new products.

An exploit targeted at Nvidia’s Tegra X1 mobile/embedded processor takes advantage of an apparently unpatchable vulnerability in the Nintendo Switch game console and other X1-based systems. Dubbed the Fusée Gelée coldboot vulnerability, it can reportedly run arbitrary code on the consoles.

The City of Atlanta will spend more than $2.6 million to recover from a SamSam ransomware attack on its online services. The ransomware attacker demanded about $55,000 in Bitcoin, which wasn’t paid by the city. The payment portal set up to collect the ransom was taken offline before the deadline to pay. The city engaged Secureworks and Ernst & Young in responding to the ransomware, which exploits a deserialization vulnerability in Java-based servers, and hired the Edelman firm to provide crisis response management.

Finance
Savari of Santa Clara, Calif., raised $12 million in Series B funding, bringing its total private funding to $20 million. Aviva Ventures led the round, with participation by existing investors SAIC Capital, Flex, and an unnamed strategic investor. Savari is developing software and sensor hardware for automotive manufacturers, the automotive aftermarket, and smart cities. It specializes in cellular V2X technology, including advanced driver-assistance systems for autonomous and semi-autonomous vehicles. The startup, founded in 2011, has offices in Detroit in addition to its Silicon Valley headquarters, and in Germany, India, and South Korea.

San Francisco-based IFTTT received $24 million in a new round of funding led by Salesforce Ventures. IBM, Chamberlain Group, and Fenox Venture Capital also participated. IFTTT, which offers an Internet of Things platform for hundreds of applications, has raised a total of $63 million in private funding since its founding in 2010.

M&A
Santa Clara-based Palo Alto Networks completed its acquisition of Israel’s Secdo. Financial terms were not revealed.

Commentary
Maciej Kranz of Cisco Systems outlines five “dark side” IoT challenges that must be addressed to increase adoption of the technology by consumers, enterprises, and other parties.

Market Research
A white paper, “Introduction to the Internet of Things,” is now available from 151 Advisors.

Personnel
Taoglas named Jeff Shamblin vice president of engineering. He previously served as chief scientist and chief technology officer at Ethertronics.

Products/Services
Sequans Communications says SoftBank Corp., part of SoftBank Group, validated the company’s Monarch LTE-M/NB-IoT Platform for use on its network for Cat-M1 applications.

Innodisk introduced a DDR4 2666 small-outline dual-inline memory module to work with IoT edge devices.