“5 minutes of sheer terror”: Hackers infiltrate East Bay family’s Nest surveillance camera (tr)

Mercury News ^ | 1/21/2019 | Matthia Gafni

[PittsburghAfterDark]

I don’t know how people are allowing Alexa, Siri and Google into so many connected areas of their homes.

This isn’t grumpy old man, “Darn newfangled gadgets confoundit!”

This is having watched every tech heavy movie from 2001 to Enemy of the State and series like Mr. Robot and taking the threats seriously.

About the only area where I see value in an internet home camera is a front doorbell.

Internet connected appliances, HVAC, voice activated *Insert service/device here* is just well beyond what I want to accept in potential problems, threats and attacks.

Hell, my PC is still behind a wired firewall.

[fruser1]

“third party hack”

Someone found a way to exploit that backdoor we left open to collect info about you.

[Vendome]

Firewall...

Dorks...

[yesthatjallen]

Yes, there’s a reason they didn’t alert customers to this security risk. They planted it.

[sport]

Same reason that I do not have a smart phone. I do not want any device that is smarter than I am.

[Ronniesque]

Not necessarily the issue here, but besides making sure to set up a unique password for these devices, when it comes to your router some people need to be aware of there is not just a wireless password to deal with, but an “admin” password to your own router settings that also needs to be set up (with a unique password of course).

[Lurkinanloomin]

LOL, HAL is exactly why I don’t have any of that crap.

[Oatka]

While everyone cites 1984 Huxley was closer to the truth than Orwell.

Agreed, but Orwell did call this one:

[Marchmain]

That’s why I have a $12 analog phone from Walmart ;)

[Svartalfiar]

“Perhaps the lesson here is that “secure WiFi” isn’t. “

WiFi is secure.

If yours is not secure it is your fault.

From some random kid who borrowing a book on networking from the library, sure. But not at all from someone who has a little bit of knowledge and drive. I have a buddy that started getting into networking and stuff, and when he came to visit he'd get bored sometimes. So by the next morning, he had hashes to all 20-30 SSIDs (WiFis) around the apartment, and had the password cracked on half of them. He'd usually get the rest within a day or two. All you need is a packet sniffer and something to crack the hashes. Easy to get.

[grobdriver]

This is why there is a band-aid covering my laptop camera.

:)
Blue painter's tape here.

[grobdriver]

LOL!!!

My experience says any two of those girls are texting each other.

[glorgau]

Yep, gotta isolate that stuff. Most of the firmware in those devices will never be updated and will just sit running with known vulnerabilities just waiting to be exploited. Or, there are things known as “bricker bots”. Those take lists of known vulnerable devices that will never be updated and turns them into bricks -something that is nothing more than dead weight.