Shifting cyber threats menace factory floors | The Register

Posted in October 9th, 2004

Interesting….

Back in 96 or 97, I was planning on putting my garage thermostat on line. That way I could turn up the furnace when I was leaving my day job, and it would be ready to roll when I got home. It seemed to be a cool idea….

Then I got thinking about some script kiddie hacking it, and running my garage all the way up to 120 deg F. Yes… the furnace out there is overkill. Its rated at 120,000BTU, and the garage has 4″ thick styrofoam insulation and my workshop is not all that large. One day, a relay stuck, and I had melted beeswax dripping off the shelf. (Its used to repair accordian reed valves).

As such, no ethernet thermostat in my garage. However, I did serious think about writing an email handler… so with the appropriate message (and encryption I could adjust the thermostat via email. Maybe I need to rethink that idea once again.

That reminds me…. I need to install my 4 foot multichannel thermal probe before the ground freezes. I can then determine soil freezing levels for spring planting, should I have enough time for a garden.