How can you reasonably ask a consumer to evaluate the security of a product when many don’t have basic education? Also, many reputable companies that make “good products” have security breaches, so you can’t just rely on reputation.
Force the consumer to force manufacturers to make less shitty products. Until that happens I hope brickerbot type attacks continue to happen for the cheapo crap.
Sure good products can have a security flaw. But iot and home routers are complete garbage. The consumer should be held liable for being apart of massive disruption of the internet.
It's the equivalent of manslaughter, you might not have intended it. But in this case you didn't do anything to stop it and helped to cause millions in damage. I quite frankly don't care about their education. That's their responsibility. Just the same as you need to learn to drive.
The way the consumer would force manufacturers to do this is by passing laws that would make manufacturers liable.
They would do this because of information asymmetry and the collective action problem. At the point of purchase, consumers don't have the information to make a choice, and they don't have the ability to will an alternative into existence so they can choose it. Improvement in collective outcomes is often hard to achieve purely through market means, which is why we don't rely on markets to solve all these problems.
Personally I think the consumer should face financial liability when iot devices are used in massive attacks that create problems for others.
Just because you chose a shitty vendor with a shitty product doesn't mean the entire internet should suffer.
I am a fan of things like brickerbot and I hope that sort of thing continues aggressively.