The ZigBee Alliance and Thread announce what is described as a a solution to the fragmentation of the connected device industry-- Dotdot, an open, interoperable IoT language running over the Thread IP network.

According to the two companies, the IoT currently faces the same challenges as the early internet since connected devices lack the equivalent of open, universal protocols over IP. Dotdot, as a common device language over the Thread IP network, promises to be the solution to such woes, providing "the high-quality, interoperable user experiences needed to drive growth."

Dotdot is not a new standard. Instead it allows the ZigBee standard to work on the Thread network. Both standards are backed by industry-leading companies, and already find use in homes and offices. As such, Dotdot simply extends IP to low-power IoT devices, providing an option in end-to-end connectivity and interoperability.

Researchers at the University of Washington solve one of the issues the Internet of Things poses by 3D-printing plastic objects with built-in wifi capabilities-- no power source or electronics required!

"Our goal was to create something that just comes out of your 3D printer at home and can send useful information to other devices," a team member says. "But the big challenge is how do you communicate wirelessly with wifi using only plastic? That's something that no one has been able to do before."

The team 3D-printed three wifi-enabled objects-- a weighing scale, a flow sensor and an anemometer able to measure wind speed using commercially available plastics and wifi receivers. A combination of 3D-printed springs, gears and switches (based on the same principles allowing battery-free watches to keep time) translates motion into antenna-transmitted data, while backscatter techniques reflect radio signals emitted by a wifi router or other devices.

The enterprise WLAN market sees the lowest Y-o-Y increase in over 2 years in Q3 2017, IDC reports-- 2.8%, a "significant growth deceleration" compared to the 9.4% Y-o-Y growth of Q2 2017.

Enterprise WLAN revenues for the quarter total $1.49 billion.

However, despite such weaker than expected results the analyst says the enterprise WLAN market remains strong, and growth should return to the normal mid- to high-single digit rate in upcoming quarters. Upgrades to 802.11ac-based hardware remain a shipment driver, part of the ongoing enterprise digital transformation (DX).

Researchers warn of a serious flaw in the WPA2 protocol securing all wifi networks-- one allowing attackers to steal passwords, emails and other supposedly encrypted data!

Dubbed Key Reinstallation Attacks (or KRACKs), such attacks even allow those with malicious intent to inject ransomware and malware into a website a user is visiting, all while simply being in range of a vulnerable device. These can be any wifi-capable device, although the flaw is "particularly devastating" in the case of Linux and Android 6.0.

How does KRACK works? As the researchers put it, attackers can duplicate a vulnerable WPA2 network, impersonate the MAC address and change the wifi channel. The fake network acts as a "man in the middle," forcing devices to connect to the rogue network instead of the protected original.