CUJO primed to protect your home network from threats

[HEXUS]

Launching today, we look into this intriguing device.

Read more.

[lumireleon]

this sounds great why lie?? with the hacker spring of ANDROID infections it will be nice to monitor your traffic quite well.

[shaithis]

this sounds great why lie?? with the hacker spring of ANDROID infections it will be nice to monitor your traffic quite well.

a. Android problems are trojans. No device is going to stop idiocy.

b. As soon as you walk out of your front door, your not protected any more.

c. CUJO is like any other virus checker, only as good as it's algorithm and definitions. This is never going to catch as many infections on (for example) Windows, compared to a proper fully-fledge Windows-based virus checker.

d. Statistics and other information sent "to the cloud". I am sure Saracen and a few others will add this to their SLs due to that.

e. $89 / year or $9 / month? and that's on top of the undisclosed hardware fee up-front. I'd rather use the free or more platform-specific virus checkers.


Seems like another company looking to make money from fear.

[Saracen]

...

d. Statistics and other information sent "to the cloud". I am sure Saracen and a few others will add this to their SLs due to that.

...

If you mean what I think you mean by "SL", and I'd probably use "blacklist", then I have an opinion but perhaps not quite what you might expect. It depends on

Q: Is CUJO merely a gateway to the internet, or does it send any information back to your servers? Do users have to worry about their sensitive data passing through another layer?

A: We send encrypted meta data to the cloud to apply behavioral analysis. Communication between CUJO and the cloud happens over an encrypted channel, and only limited metadata is sent.

My cloud aversion is for MY data. I am adamant about there being NO CHANCE of, say, a Word file, or a PDF, or a spreadsheet, ending up cloud-stored with it being explicitly MY decision to store that file in that way. That is, before there's any chance of such an upload happening, I want it to be my specific, conscious informed decision. And it won't happen very often, if at all.

This, if you like, is part-privacy, but largely security. I sometimes have 3rd party data, and some of it is VERY commercially sensitive. If it gets out, and that's tracked to my version of said files, at the very least I'd lose that 3rd-party's trust, almost certainly their business, and quite possibly end up getting sued.

Then rather than data I hold, there's data about me, such as shopping habits, etc. That's purely about personal privacy, and is an entirely separate issue.

If the above quote from the article holds true, then it sort-of falls between those two issues. If it's truly ONLY behavioural metadata, then the first issue is moot, because it's not MY data ending up in the cloud, but metadata about my network activity.

I do still have concerns. Exactly what metadata? Who is it used by, and for what? And what security is in place both for raw metadata, and crucially, for processed and analysed conclusions.

It comes down to balancing any risk of loss of privacy, to any security gains made.

Generally, corporate privacy intrusion amounts to them taking, or seeking to buy, data about me and my family, so they can sell me something. I don't want that, by anyone, ever. No sales phone calls, no emails, knocks or my door, addressed personalised letters, nothing. No exceptions. Which is why I'm vehemently opposed to such corpieate intrusions .... I have ZERO interest in what they seek to 'offer' in return for my data. They can, in fact, take any and all such offers, douse them in lighter fuel, fold them 'til they're all sharp corners, and shove their 'offers' somewhere anatomically uncomfortable. Then set light to them.

However ... this offer is a bit different. It's offering a security service, not an attempt to sell me something (from my personal data), and the trade-off is the encrypted metadata, versus improved security. It's possible I could be convinced such a trade-off was worthwhile.

My concerns, on this, would be more prosaic. Does it work? How much extra security? Is it worthwhile to me? What does it cost? Do I know the company? What's their reputation? Do I trust them, or that their claims are realistic and their statements honest and reliable?

I could perhaps be convinced. But I'm not, yet.

[DDY]

Hmm, no good for encrypted services such as HTTPS then?