Is Your Watch Or Thermostat A Spy? Cybersecurity Firms Are On It --- There is a sharp divide in the technology world. One camp is racing to connect our devices to the Internet, to make everything — from the watch to the refrigerator — smart, so to speak. -- The other camp is terrified of what that means: everyday objects that can be hacked, easily, to spy on us and hand off valuable data to cybercriminals. The cynics are gathered in Las Vegas this week, at the security conference Black Hat. --- The Nest Hacker - People who hack for good have come to Mandalay Bay to share their research. -- Meet Grant Hernandez, 21, who is an undergraduate security researcher at the University of Central Florida, and he hacked one of the smartest smart devices on the market: Nest. The home thermostat uses sensors to tell when you're home and adjust temperature accordingly. With a shiny silver rim and black center, it kind of looks like a big eyeball. And Hernandez says, it's pretty easy to turn into a spy. -- Nest left the device on display at the conference unprotected. So by plugging in a USB, he can enter developer mode. -- "Entering into that mode allows you to upload your own code, your custom code, which then allows you to attack the existing code, implant your own and reboot normally, but maybe have something else running in the background," says Hernandez. -- If Hernandez wanted to, he could run to the Loews store, buy every Nest, reprogram it to shoot user data to him — and the customer wouldn't have a clue. -- "We have access to the device on the highest level and we can send stuff that Nest sends to us as well," he says. -- Nest, which is owned by Google, says security is "very important" and the company's "highest priority" is on remote, wireless hacks. This hack, which is to the hardware, does not compromise the security of the data that's inside the Nest servers. - More, NPR, http://www.npr.org/blogs/alltechconsidered/2014/08/06/338334508/is-your-watch-or-thermostat-a-spy-cyber-security-firms-are-on-it