Northern.tech announces the release of Mender Hub, a community repository to enable over-the-air software updates for any connected device and operating system

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Dec 04, 2018, 09:18 ET

SAN FRANCISCO, Dec. 4, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Northern.tech, Inc, the company behind the Mender.io open source project to manage over-the-air (OTA) software updates for IoT devices, announces Mender Hub: a community repository to enable OTA updates for any connected device and OS. The aim of Mender Hub is to create the world's largest community repository for developers to easily implement a secure and robust OTA update manager for any device fleet to enable IoT security.

A major challenge today in securing IoT devices is the diverse nature of the device development ecosystem. "Embedded development is a very diverse space and the lack of technology standardization generates a lot of custom work for device makers," said Ralph Nguyen, Head of Community Development for the Mender.io project. "This applies to something as fundamental as remote software updates - most developers develop their own custom update mechanism due to the diversity of hardware and OS. This is precisely why we created Mender Hub: developers can now reuse tested and validated integrations with a freely available open source update manager."

A consequence of the growth of IoT devices is the increase of easy targets for malicious actors, evident in the proliferation of malware targeting poorly secured IoT devices. There have been an increasing number of malware infecting poorly secured connected devices. The 2016 Dyn DDoS attack was one of the clearest examples of the ramifications of poorly secured IoT devices, which was executed through the Mirai malware infecting a large number of IoT devices. The IoT botnet attack caused major outages across Internet platforms and services, including Amazon, GitHub, and Netflix.

The challenge for IoT developers is the tremendous pressure to release their product. And that can mean bypassing baseline security hardening that could help prevent large scale attacks such as the Dyn DDoS attack. Making sure the update process is secure and robust is by no means a trivial matter, and that has been obvious with many real-world examples of devices being bricked or stuck in a reboot loop. A few examples include the update that bricked the smart locks by Lockstate, who were recommended by Airbnb. There was also an issue with Chrysler's infotainment system after an update. That caused constant rebooting and drained their vehicles' batteries.

"Many organizations only realize the complexities in managing remote software updates after the devices have gone into production," said Eystein Stenberg, Chief Technology Officer for Mender. "Remote updates are very complicated, with many nuances to consider to ensure a secure and robust update process to avoid man-in-the-middle attacks, bricked devices, and reboot loops. Our aim with Mender Hub is to enable developers to have a secure OTA update process without risky shortcuts, whatever board or OS they choose to work with."

Mender Hub is the evolution of the Mender project, providing a central repository where IoT developers can collaborate to quickly and safely implement a reliable update manager to their specific IoT hardware and OS. Mender Hub was created to encourage a community approach in the spirit of open source to develop out-of-the-box integrations to various devices in order to OTA-enable them with an open source OTA update manager, Mender.

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