Add cybersecurity warning in documentation somewhere? #4
Description
Disclaimer: I know nothing about chemistry (I got a D in college, ha!), I'm just a software engineer
Saw the CNET article, this kind of automated tech sounds really promising! I hope this makes a huge difference in the coming years.
Looks like some of the pieces of this are (potentially) controlled by insecure + unauthenticated network connections. If a lot of labs started using this software, one could imagine that an enterprising Bad Guy could infiltrate said network and talk directly to the chemputer networked components. If the machines were connected to things that could be potentially mixed in ways to cause bad physical effects (say a gas or an explosion)... seems bad. Might seem far fetched, but if some eventual user of your software had some reason to be targeted by a state-funded entity, could definitely be pulled off if the machines were connected to an external network.
Actually fixing the problem is hard.
Recommendation: Most people don't really think about this sort of thing, so it seems that it would be good to warn would-be users that if they are hooking up potentially dangerous combinations of chemicals to the machine that they should definitely not hook up any of the systems to computers that are connected to external networks. Especially if a state actor might be interested in disrupting their research for some reason.
Just a thought.