While it is pretty cool to be able to hook up our various appliances and gadgets to the internet and be able to control them remotely, there is the question of security, where being connected to the internet means that your device is essentially open to the possibility of being hacked. Unfortunately for one Andy Gregg, that is precisely what happened.
In a report from Arizona Republic (via Motherboard), it seems that Gregg’s Nest security camera was hacked and where the hacker was actually able to speak to Gregg through the camera which you can see in the video above. It is rather creepy and disconcerting to suddenly have a stranger’s voice in your home, especially with it coming from a device that is meant to keep you safe.
However this was not a malicious hack, or at least that’s what the person on the other end told Gregg. According to the hacker, he claims to be a whitehat hacker part of the Anonymous Calgary Hivemind in Canada and that his hack was just to alert Gregg to the potential of what someone with malicious intent could do, such as find out where he lives so that they know no one’s home and possibly rob him.
The hacker also provided some security tips to Gregg, such as enabling two-factor authentication for his Nest account. In the video above Gregg seems to be taking it all in stride pretty well, and the hacker also apologized if he freaked him out, although we imagine that there could possibly be less creepy ways of alerting someone to security flaws. That being said what’s interesting about this hack is that last month antivirus software company McAfee did warn that malware targeting our smart homes is expected to increase in 2019.
Filed in . Read more about Connected Objects, Hack, IoT (Internet of Things), Nest and Security.