They blocked Netflix, but no one's in a rush to regulate insecure 'smart devices'

It seems the banal world of baby monitors and webcams is all it takes to bring down our most popular websites these days.

So, what should we do about it? Well, we shouldn't regulate — at least not yet, according to the Australian government.

At an address at the National Press Club in Canberra Wednesday, Minister Dan Tehan, who assists the prime minister with cyber security, said the government would regulate smart devices to ensure adequate security only as a "last resort."

The option may have to be exercised sooner rather than later, however. In late October, major sites like Twitter, Netflix and Spotify were left briefly inaccessible after thousands of insecure internet-connected devices were hijacked and used to funnel a stream of malicious traffic at the domain name systems (DNS) provider, Dyn.  Read more...