Your smart home will be hacked. Heres how to stop it

Some day, we will all live in smart homes. Automated gadgets running on the Internet of Things will manage our lighting and heat, keep our appliances humming, and free us up to do more important things, like play Candy Crush Saga 24/7.

Before they do all that, though, the Internet of Things, or IoT, has a lot of growing up to do.

So far, tech startups have done a great job of churning out inexpensive gizmos that turn on the lights when you enter the room or start the coffee when you wake up, but theyve done a mostly terrible job of making sure random strangers cant also flip on your Philips Hue or control your Keurig.

Last July, Hewlett-Packard released a scathing report on the poor security of IoT devices, noting that more than seven out of 10 have some kind of vulnerability.

Over the past three years, devices like Nests smart thermostat, Kwiksets SmartKey lock, Foscams baby monitors, and thousands of home security cameras have been compromised in the lab or in the wild.

A report scheduled to be released on Wednesday by enterprise security firm Veracode details some of the ways IoT devices can be hacked, controlled remotely, and even used to spy on you.

Given the right circumstances, an external attacker could know when youre not home, open and close your garage door, turn your lights on or off, and even eavesdrop on your conversations.

Safe...for now

Thats the theory. In practice, at least for now, smart-home hacking isnt that big a concern.

IoT devices arent widespread enough yet to be tempting targets for hackers. Not when theyve got all these juicy insecure corporate databases to pilfer from.

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Your smart home will be hacked. Heres how to stop it