Smart gadgets are wonderful things. They help us automate a lot of our lives, and provide us with even better and accessible home security than ever. However its security is really only as strong as your account’s password, which is what a family in Orinda discovered when their Nest camera was accessed and used to broadcast a fake message about North Korea firing missiles at the US.
We imagine that this was a pretty scary situation since it did come out of the blue and from a device that the family assumed was secure. According to Laura Lyons who owns the camera, she is seeking answers from Nest as to how her account was compromised. Speaking to Mercury News, Lyons said, “It warned that the United States had retaliated against Pyongyang and that people in the affected areas had three hours to evacuate. It sounded completely legit, and it was loud and got our attention right off the bat…It was five minutes of sheer terror and another 30 minutes of trying to figure out what was going on.”
This is not the first time that smart home devices have been accessed remotely by hackers. Last year another Nest security camera was hacked where the hacker actually had a conversation with the owner of the device. In this particular instance, the hacker was actually a white hat hacker and basically hacked the device to prove how unsecure it was. Nest had previously advised users to update their passwords and to enable two-factor authentication.