In the classic urban legend, a babysitter left alone in charge of sleeping children receives several mysterious, threatening telephone calls beckoning her to come upstairs. After two or three calls, she calls the operator (remember them?), who investigates, calls her back and tells her to get out of the house immediately. The police find a murderous lunatic just upstairs who was about to kill the babysitter.

Today, threats such as spear phishing, ransomware, and denial-of-service attacks are our modern-day, true urban legends. While there may not be murderous lunatics on the other end of every nefarious attack, the activities of the culprits impact thousands of individuals on a day-to-day basis. The Internet of Things has expanded in the past few years to include such things as fitness wearables, remote home security cameras, and “smart cars,” giving enterprising cybercriminals new avenues into our data and our lives. During the summer of 2015, for example, security researchers demonstrated the ability to remotely do everything from unlocking doors and turning on windshield wipers to jerking steering wheels, disabling brakes and even paralyzing a Jeep on the highway. Home security cameras have also been prime targets for intrusions; one family in Rochester, Minnesota, found thousands of pictures of the interiors of homes around the world online that had been taken with Internet-enabled security cameras. Another report described a family member who heard someone talking through the security camera to his small child.

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