Author: Scott Gruby

Last week I went to test drive a new car and after test driving, I was ready to buy. There are, of course, a number of steps required to purchase a car including securing a loan, providing proof of insurance, and getting insurance for the new vehicle. I’ve used my banking and insurance company’s app for years basically to check my account balances. For the last year or so, I’ve checked my credit card balance almost weekly to make sure it isn’t too high in anticipation of applying for a car loan. The app was useful for this, but that didn’t prove the power of the app.

When it came time to apply for a loan, I pushed a few buttons on the app (while someone else was driving), applied for a loan, got approved, and signed all the loan documents. On top of just getting the loan, the app let me fax or email the payment instructions directly to the dealer. In case that wasn’t enough, I knew I needed insurance and didn’t know what my insurance company provided on a new car before I spoke to them, so I looked on the app to see what I could do. Even before I left the finance guy’s office, I had entered the VIN of the car into the app, got a quote on the new policy and added the car to my policy. The app also provided me with proof of insurance. Now that was cool.

Apps can do so much these days, it is so hard to know what I want an app to do until I have a need. It’s not like I’m going to do this every day or week, but knowing that this company has put in just about every feature you could imagine to handle everyday and occasional needs makes me even more pleased that I’ve used them for a long time.

Back in July, I stumbled upon the Subaru Impreza as possibly my next car. With the release pegged at the end of the year, a few weeks ago, I started looking at the dealer sites to see when they’d get the car so I could test drive it. I picked the trim level I wanted (that was easy) and was looking at the option packages. There were only 2 choices and trying to figure out which one I wanted was quite difficult.

Subaru’s website shows the following image:

If you look closely, the differences are that the more expensive package has better audio and the Multimedia Navigation. It implies that only it has the 8″ display and the less expensive option doesn’t. I definitely wanted the 8″ display, but finding that option package on the cars coming to the dealers proved more difficult. After more research, I found another link that described the different multimedia systems.

SUBARU STARLINK™ 8.0″ Multimedia Plus with Apple CarPlay™, Android Auto™, Pandora® and Aha™ smartphone app integration5, STARLINK™ cloud-based applications, including Yelp®, iHeart® Radio, Magellan® navigation7, SiriusXM® All Access Satellite Radio8 and Travel Link®8, high-resolution LCD touchscreen display, 6 speakers, AM/FM/CD player, HD Radio®, USB port/iPod® control, Bluetooth® audio streaming and hands-free phone and text messaging connectivity, and 3.5-mm auxiliary jack

And…

SUBARU STARLINK™ 8.0″ Multimedia Navigation System: Voice-activated 8.0-inch multi-touch gesture high-resolution GPS navigation system with Apple CarPlay™, Android-Auto™, Pandora®, Aha™ and smartphone app integration5, STARLINK™ cloud-based applications, including Yelp®, iHeart® Radio, Magellan® navigation7, SiriusXM® All Access Satellite Radio8, Traffic®16 and Travel Link®16, high-resolution LCD touchscreen display, AM/FM/CD player, HD Radio®, dual USB port/iPod® control, Bluetooth® audio streaming and hands-free phone and text messaging connectivity, and 3.5-mm auxiliary jack

Spotting the differences between the two became even harder. Both had the 8″ display (great), but what were the other differences? The only difference that matters is that the second one has “GPS navigation”. Now I was getting somewhere. This means that there are maps loaded into a navigation system and there is a GPS antenna. However, with CarPlay and Maps on my phone, why would I want this?

Pros of GPS Navigation

• Doesn’t use smartphone data
• External GPS antenna provides faster acquisition and potentially better accuracy
• Potentially faster recalculating as it doesn’t have to goto the cloud
• Works when there are no cell towers

Cons

• Separate interface to Maps on iPhone
• No integration with contacts on phone

Now I was getting somewhere. Given that Maps on my phone has worked well with my phone in my pocket (connecting over Bluetooth) and the number of times I haven’t had cell coverage in the last 5 years I can count on one hand, the decision was easy; forget the GPS navigation. Too bad the choices weren’t clearer.

(An interesting note is that while NAVIGON and other iPhone mapping apps can store maps locally and not use GPS data, Apple hasn’t given them the ability to use CarPlay.)

The recent distributed denial of service attack is said to have been caused by the Mirai botnet which basically turns IoT devices in attackers. One of the devices that is vulnerable is an IP camera that has a default username and password. While I don’t have that brand of camera, my cameras have accounts that I can’t remove and apparently one ONVIF account with a username/password that can’t be changed. I’m pretty good at securing my network from people coming in, but what about things going out? A lot of these IoT devices talk to a server for firmware updates or whatever. Since my IP cameras only need to talk to my server that is recording video, there is absolutely no need for them to connect to the Internet. I decided to see what I could do to isolate the traffic; this is something I’ve wanted to do for 3.5 years ever since I got a Cisco router that did VLANs, but couldn’t figure out a reason and didn’t have the knowledge to do it. However, times have changed.

In my case, I now have managed switches UniFi Switch 8 and the 16 port version as well as an EdgeRouter Lite. Using this equipment, I was easily able to separate out the camera traffic on a VLAN that has no access to the Internet. Here’s what I did:

1. On the EdgeRouter Lite, setup a new VLAN. From the Dashboard, click on Add Interface and then Add VLAN.
   
2. Setup the VLAN similar to the picture. The 1002 is the VLAN ID. Select the Interface for your LAN port. Enter the IP address for this subnet.
   
3. Click Save.
4. Switch to the Firewall/NAT tab. Select Firewall Policies.
   
5. Click Add Ruleset.
6. Set it up similar to this picture.
   . Repeat for CAMERAS_OUT and CAMERAS_LOCAL (in is for data coming from the camera subnet, out is for data going to the camera subnet, and local is data to and from the router.
7. After the rules are saved, select Actions to the right of the IN rule. Choose Interfaces.
   
8. Select the VLAN (ethernet port + VLAN ID) and the direction. Click on Save Ruleset. Then close the dialog.
   
9. Repeat the above steps for the OUT and LOCAL rulesets.
10. IN and OUT are now complete; basically we have just made all traffic from this new VLAN never goto the Internet or receive data from the Internet.
11. To the right of the LOCAL ruleset, click on Actions and select Edit Ruleset.
12. Click Add New Rule.
13. Enter NTP for the description and select Accept. Select UDP for the Protocol.
    
14. Click on Destination. Enter 123 for the port.
    
15. Click Save.
16. Create a new rule for DNS using UDP port 53.
17. Create a new rule for DHCP using UDP port 67.
18. Click Services at the top of the Edge Router interface.
19. Click Add DHCP Server.
    1.
20. Set it up like in this picture.
    
21. After setting up the DHCP server, you may want to Configure Static Map to assign specific IP addresses for each MAC address.
22. Before leaving this area, click on DNS and add the VLAN as a Listen Interface and click Save.
23. Now move over the UniFi Controller.
24. Goto Settings and choose Networks.
    
25. Click Create New Network. Set it up similar to this picture.
    
26. Click save.
27. Goto Devices and select the UniFi Switch. Click Ports and locate a port with a camera. Click the Pencil.
28. Change the VLAN to the Cameras VLAN. Click save.
    
29. Power cycle that port and the device will come up on the new VLAN.
30. On my Mac (the machine recording video), go into Network settings, click the gear and select Manage Virtual Interfaces.
    
31. Click the + button and select New VLAN.
    
32. Enter the VLAN ID for the Tag and give it a name.
    
33. Click Create and then click Done.
34. Select the new interface, select Configure IPv4 Manually. Alternatively you can use DHCP.
    
35. Re-configure your security software (in my case SecuritySpy) with the new IP addresses.
36. I also changed the NTP address in the cameras to be 10.0.2.1 as the router will now block all traffic trying to go outside. The EdgeRouter Lite happens to be running an NTP server which is quite convenient.

Yes, there are a lot of steps here, but this makes me feel a bit safer. Without a managed switch and a router that can handle VLANs, this would be difficult, if not impossible. Unfortunately most people won’t be able to do this and their IoT devices will be targets. I have no idea how we’re going to solve the problem of IoT devices getting hacked, used to launch hacks, or generally cause havoc on the Internet.

Please let me know if I missed anything or there are any mistakes.

Some time ago, IPv6 disappeared from my home network. After a bit of research, I found out that Time Warner Cable had a problem with my cable modem (Motorola SB 6183) and IPv6 so they pushed out a firmware that disabled IPv6. Recently I read in the Time Warner forums that a firmware update would be out soon that has this fixed.

This got me thinking about IPv6 on my home network. While I’m not sure exactly why I need it, I’m curious about it. Do all my devices support IPv6? Should I move everything to IPv6? Both of these questions are not my focus right now as my IPv4 network is fine, and I don’t want to put my head around it. What this did bring up, however, is the availability of updates for devices on my network; not just IPv6 support, but security and stability fixes.

My network has a large number of devices from a number of manufacturers. I have 7 video cameras, 7 Squeezebox devices, 3 Macs, 3 iPhones, 5 iPads, a sprinkler controller, Apple TV, Fire TV, Amazon Echo, serial to Ethernet adapter, 3 WiFi access points, 2 managed switches, printer, a Vera, and a partridge in a pear tree. These devices range from being a few months old to some being many years old. How do they get updates? Are they still made? As a tech person, I try to keep on top of all the updates and keep my network secure.

One of the problems with keeping all these devices updated is that some of the manufacturers are no longer around or the devices are no longer supported. Does this pose a security risk? Devices that update their firmware automatically like the Amazon Echo make this whole upgrade issue moot (until the company goes out of business or moves on). What does the average person do with all these devices? The simplest solution for devices that don’t update their own firmware, unfortunately, is to replace them every few years. This is a complete waste, but potentially the only solution. The problem is going to get worse as more and more devices are put on the network.

What do other people do to keep devices updated? Maybe I need a quarterly update day to check all my devices.