W11 – Crashing and Hacking the Smart City – Page 2

Crashing and Hacking the Smart City–Yumeng Chen

Buggy, Brittle and Bugged

–In the case Y2K, the reality is very like the division of labour in society today, people just pay attention to their own duty, which relevance their own benefit only. However, if there’s a issue which brings no benefit or benefit others as well, who will have the motivation to do it?

An Emerging US (and World) Threat: Cities Wide Open to Cyber Attacks

–In page 8, author talks about encryption issues, test process is really big issue. Because it is really depends on specific situation where this system placed. Kind like architecture, why we say it is irreproducible, because even we got the same drawings, we can’t build the same building in 2 places due to the different of weather, environment and even the workers. Same, I think the test should be in the specific location. How do we think about this idea which relates to the cost increasing and the time increasing?

–Another thing always comes to my mind is, in order to keep the city security, we have to keep improving the firewall in order to defend the hackers, same like the chip card technology. It’s kind like an abime, since we start with the big data, open source, we start to fight against the hackers. When we began to build smart city, did we consider about the cost of the follow up cost?

Crashing and Hacking the Smart City — Shen

1 Buggy, Brittle, and Bugged

From the case 9.11 and US east earthquake in 2011 are showed that creation myths rely on faith as much as fact. It demonstrated how our cyber world could more brittle then we thought. And those are just caused by nature. In fact our cyber world are suffering attack or errors thousand times a day. How could we measure the loss of the cyber broke down? and how’s the restore power of the our society in the future cyber world?

Like the sensor served by it code, every data capture by it are served by own purpose. How to consider the hacker act of hacking system? Hacking bank system and benefit for itself considered as negative? Or hacking government data exposure dark history consider as positive? How could we defined the boundary of the cyber world act? Or could it consider access forbidden data as hacker?

2 An emerging US threat: City Wide Open to Cyber Attacks

There are so many option to break down our cyber world. What if our data infrastructure has been wiped out? Like one day all our individual currency or credit information data has been wiped out. Could we restore our order to our used to be? Is there any crash program to due with certain kinds of issues?

Crashing and Hacking the Smart City – zhicheng zhang

the reading gives us an example of the failure of a smart toilet and its backup: the physical button. the physical button is the full function of the normal toilet today, Does the smart city have to need a physical backup with the full function of the normal city? or have a basic backup?
besides the physical backup, since the development of smart city will take part in multiple cities, should a city smart city become a backup for another city?
the reading talks about the third disastrous situation the technology emerges at the wrong time. since right now we have some example of the smart city such as Songdo, Hudson Yards. is it better to build a new city like Songdo, then after the city and the moving in citizen adopt the new technology, then tear down the old one and rebuild?

W11. Crashing and Hacking the Smart City – pinelopi

Cerrudo, “An Emerging US (and World) Threat: Cities Wide Open to Cyber Attacks,” White Paper

-To take seriously the arguments of a paper that omits references or draws them from Wikipedia and Amazon is certainly unlikely. As a marketing tool, this white paper presents smartness as synonymous to automation and security, while bugs, glitches, cyber-terrorists or hacktivists pose equally serious dangers to the city (pp.10, 17). The author appears to regard transparency of decision making to be a drawback and presents open data as raw material for attacks (pp.15), yet he seems to reach some conclusions worth considering, such as the need for a fail-safe approach and manual overrides, as well as proper encryption and authentication in software that mediates urban processes. In which ways can digital infrastructure be designed to filter out malicious attacks, but still invite participation? How will this line be drawn and by whom?

-In an attempt to map the attack surface of a smart city, the author applies a deterministic, sequential rhetoric: it all begins with malicious manipulation of information, which creates a false alarm, which causes the wrong behavior change of citizens, which then results at some type of congestion – mobility or energy-wise. Yet, I dare say this effect would mostly appear in u-cities with non-existent legacy organizational systems, as existing cities would probably self-regulate their flows in an alternate way shortly after the disruption – given that their legacy infrastructure would remain in place. How can an analog Plan B be designed for a smart Plan A? What would their common elements consist of?

Townsend, “Buggy, Brittle and Bugged,” Smart Cities: pp.252-281

-As Townsend unfolds the wide spectrum of cyber-sabotage, one may identify that the aftermath is more often than not constructive. In which ways do “zero-day” attacks (pp.267) contribute to the evolution of software by creating links of collaboration between groups of opposing interests? Walking in the shoes of hackers is commonplace for security researchers in their attempt to unveil vulnerabilities [ ex. Beresford of NSS Labs (pp.268), McAfee researchers (pp.269) or Davis of IOActive Labs ( in Cerrudo’s white paper, p.16)]. What are the unlikely perks of cyber-sabotage as a dynamic mechanism for code development?

-As opposed to the demands for decentralization in the 60’s (pp.277), the urban future ahead looks rather centralized according to Glaeser (pp.278). To prevent doomsday scenarios from happening is a bet we cannot afford to lose, but in which ways is a purely centralized strategy more suitable for the task? The potential failures of our cities are complex conglomerations of urban, economic, technological and social parameters. What would the forms of participation and action to address them look like, especially across different scales?

Crashing and Hacking the Smart City

Buggy, Brittle and Bugged – Townsend

It becomes clear that as technology attempts to automate tasks the design for which fails to encapsulate uncertainties and preferences, we will be surrounded with “buggy” infrastructures. This begs the question, Will the smart city have a manual flush option? Or will we be subjects of frequent bugs and glitches at ever growing scales of complexity and relative consequences?

In describing the “First actual case of a bug being found”, Townsend highlights that bugs can be software glitches resultant of coding or physical wear and tear of hardware due to lack of maintenance or unforeseen accidents. Although the public persists to call for an “exposed smart city infrastructure” where citizens can more easily perceive and understand their smart city grid, do they understand the implications doing so could have in increasing the probability of bugs and failures due to tampering?

Is it worth considering that interlacing of the entire city into a centralized smart city infrastructure (due to software interdependencies) vs more analogous, fragmented structures deployed today, that the risk and relative cost of attacks/failures effectively underscores corporations’ promise of increasing efficiency and profitability?

Will fear of tampering with the smart city infrastructure delay / effectively abolish the hope of DIY citizens’ access to smart city “walled gardens”? How can we increase the smart city infrastructure’s resilience against bugs and attacks without walling out citizens and their potential contributions to the infrastructure?

If hacking is considered an expression of agency manifesting in contingent use (exploitation) of certain technologies can we think of hacking in and of itself as a form of citizen participation that prompts constant evolution adding layers of sophistication and resilience to the smart city? Are attacks, bugs and glitches the vaccine to larger scale threats? Much like viral infections are to our immune systems? Consider a group of ethical hacking activists that aim to highlight and expose areas susceptible to infiltration much like citizens report “bugs” in the physical infrastructure (potholes etc) to local authorities today

An emerging US (and World) Threat – Cesar Cerrudo

“What would commuting look like with non functioning traffic control systems” Non technologically-mediated infrastructures have been implemented in a number of areas around Europe and the UK (shared space initiative) and have had “positive” effects – It is feasible to consider where technology should be implemented vs where is can be. In doing so can we preserve our state of functionality more so than if we surrendered everything to a floating buggy infrastructure? Or would we, by doing so, omit seemingly unnecessary technologies from contributing to a larger picture that is yet to be realized?

“How would citizens respond to an inadequate supply of electricity”..etc. Consider the plausibility of a smart city backup structure that is surrendered to the citizens. The equivalent of citizen generators and independently owned and run street lights that kick in in the event of a superstructure bug or attack. Will doing so allow DIY activists to understand the system and actively contribute/inspire future implementations with regards to security and functionality, adding resilience to the smart city infrastructure and concretizing the dialogue between top down implementation and bottom up innovation?

“The public needs to see to believe. Cities are not spurred into action by discussions about suspected vulnerable products and threats” – This reiterates that bugs and hacking are a critical component to strengthening the smart city’s immune system – making it more resilient to devastating attacks and or failures.

An investigation of the weakness of sub structural infrastructures’ security systems begs the question: could their weakness be due to a general under-estimation of the public’s understanding and will to hack, manipulate and repurpose infrastructures in addition to a general complacency with regards to maintenance and upkeep with current technological processes? Is there simply less room for such complacency now?