The growing number of connected devices and increasing vulnerabilities, including the latest one that has been exploited by North Korean and Chinese hackers, raises concerns among cybersecurity experts. They warn that such attacks will increase, and have severe consequences: from stolen data to private videos leaked on the internet.
At the beginning of December, a cybersecurity vulnerability dubbed React2Shell that can affect millions of connected home devices worldwide was publicly disclosed. Just days later, security researchers already observed hacker groups from North Korea and China exploiting the vulnerability for malicious purposes. This example illustrates how quickly hackers can exploit weaknesses, often long before vendors fix them.
A forecast from IoT Analytics predicted that this year, a number of connected home devices is expected to reach 21.1 billion, with double-digit growth projected for the upcoming years.
Not only traditional cameras and printers, but also new-gen thermostats and wearables are being increasingly incorporated in our daily lives, and potential vulnerabilities increase too.
Experts at Planet VPN, a free virtual private network provider, say that worldwide, there are many more attacks, most of which are unnoticed by users. According to Konstantin Levinzon, co-founder of the company, hackers are increasingly shifting their focus to smart homes due to their lack of protection.
“When people think about cybersecurity, they often take care of their smartphones and forget about the rest. However, other devices connected to homes often have weaker security than our smartphones or laptops, making them a more lucrative target for cybercriminals. Your TV, camera, or printer can open the door for cybercriminals to your network, and once they break in, it is hard to stop them,” Levinzon says.
A recent report by Bitdefender and Netgear, which analyzed 58 million smart home devices across the US, Australia, and Europe, found 4.6 billion vulnerabilities and noticed 13.6 billion attacks in the first 10 months of this year.
According to Levinzon, there are several ways bad actors can hijack your home. One huge security hole is outdated firmware: smart home devices often receive too few security updates, leaving them exposed to all kinds of vulnerabilities.
In addition, many devices, including routers and cameras, come with default passwords that are easy for hackers to guess. Despite the growing number of cyber incidents, users still rely on default or weak passwords, making hacking into users’ homes an easy task even for unskilled cybercriminals, Levinzon says.
On top of that, there are a number of potential issues with home network security.
“Users trust device manufacturers too much and don’t consider the security of smart home devices before buying them. For example, cheap security cameras often promise to secure your home, when in reality, they may act like a Trojan horse. Poor encryption and insecure communication protocols can expose users’ private lives online instead of keeping them safe.,” Levinzon explains.
The rise of AI assistants also poses security concerns. Earlier this year, researchers at Tel Aviv University published a paper where they described how “Google’s” AI assistant Gemini can be used to do things like open windows in a person’s apartment, after receiving only a calendar invite.
According to Levinzon, while the latter example was only theoretical, as AI continues to have much more influence in our lives, we will see more similar examples happening in real life.
Once cybercriminals compromise a person’s network, AI assistant, or device, they can then use it for various purposes: steal the user’s personal data, eavesdrop, hijack smart home equipment to launch cyberattacks, and even control your home.
To avoid becoming a victim, Levinzon advises using unique passwords and enabling multi-factor authentication. Updating firmware regularly and ensuring that these devices have secure communication protocols, such as WPA3, is also a must.
“It is also important to protect devices when you are using them,” he says. “Turn on a VPN whenever you are browsing using your smartphone, laptop, or smart TV: it will enhance your security and privacy by hiding your IP address and making your data invisible to anyone, even to your internet service provider. Remember, that for cybercriminals, even one unprotected device may be enough to take control of your entire home.”
2026 predictions from Peer Software
Posted in Commentary with tags Peer Software on December 19, 2025 by itnerdThe 2026 predictions keep coming. Today I have 2026 predictions from Jimmy Tam, CEO of Peer Software.
Agentic AI Will Converge with Distributed File Services to Enable a New Class of Distributed Digital Teams
2026 will mark the beginning of a major architectural shift: agentic AI systems will merge with distributed file services to create AI digital teams that can autonomously capture data, act on it, and push results across multiple locations and platforms. As organizations deploy distributed AI agents at the edge, in the cloud, and across data centers, they will realize the missing piece is the ability to move information seamlessly and intelligently between those agents. The convergence of agentic AI and distributed file services will become essential for orchestrating workflows, sharing context, and ensuring AI agents can collaborate in real time across heterogeneous environments.
Distributed Storage Will Become a Strategy for Load-Balancing Data, Energy Use, and GPU Costs
As GPU scarcity, energy prices, and power-availability constraints intensify, organizations will turn to distributed storage architectures to balance not just data, but operational costs and resources. In 2026, storage and infrastructure decisions will increasingly factor in electricity rates, regional resource availability, latency impacts, and GPU scheduling considerations. Instead of concentrating workloads in a single region or cloud, enterprises will distribute data and compute to optimize for cost efficiency and sustainability—shifting data to where it is cheapest and most energy-efficient to run AI workloads.
2026 Is the Year Active–Passive Architectures Officially Die
With the rise of real-time AI and globally distributed data pipelines, traditional active–passive replication models will become obsolete. Organizations can no longer tolerate backup systems sitting idle or playing catch-up during failover. Instead, active–active data architectures—where every site participates, synchronizes, and serves traffic continuously—will become the new baseline. High-availability will mean high-utilization, and anything less will be seen as both a performance bottleneck and a business risk.
AI Consolidation Will Accelerate; Driving a Wave of M&A Focused on Integrating Disparate Systems
Large vendors will aggressively acquire smaller AI, data, and edge-platform companies to accelerate capabilities, expand ecosystems, and simplify customer adoption. But the real challenge will be integrating the disparate systems these acquisitions bring. Companies that can rapidly harmonize data, metadata, and file services across newly merged environments will be the ones that deliver value fastest.
Metadata Management Becomes a Critical AI Advantage
Metadata will take center stage in 2026 as organizations struggle with AI-driven data explosion. To control cost, speed up pipelines, and avoid overwhelming GPUs, enterprises will shift from brute-force replication to metadata-driven data orchestration. Instead of moving entire datasets, businesses will filter, curate, and replicate only the specific slices of data required for a given AI, ML, or analytics workflow. Metadata-rich insights, such as access patterns, relevance scoring, or PeerIQ-style analytics, will guide what data moves where. Metadata becomes not just a way to describe data, but a way to control and optimize it.
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