A stranger hacked into a family’s camera system and then told a little girl to start breaking stuff.
It seems that every new technology designed for safety is a double-edged sword. A Mississippi family installed a Ring Camera in their daughter’s bedroom in order for their parents to keep an eye on their children when a babysitter is over. However, that same Ring Camera proved to be an avenue for hackers to look at their kids whenever they wanted.
The Ring Camera went up last week at the LeMay family’s home and stayed up for just four days. On the fourth day, it started playing music and making strange noises. And then, a chilling exchange occurred between 8-year-old Alyssa and a total stranger.
“Who is that?” Alyssa asked, obviously disturbed by what she was hearing. Then she heard a male voice reply, “I’m your best friend. I'm Santa Claus. Don't you want to be my best friend?”
After that, the hacker told her to start breaking the furniture in her bedroom. That’s when Alyssa started screaming for her mom.
“I can’t even put into words how badly I feel and how badly my children feel,” mother Ashley LeMay told the Washington Post. “I did the exact opposite of adding another security measure. I put them at risk and there’s nothing I can do to really ease their mind. I can’t tell them I know who it is. I can’t tell them that they’re not going to show up at our house in the middle of the night.”
The hackers were able to gain access to the installed Ring Camera through the family’s wifi network. Because the family used similar passwords with their various accounts, the hackers were able to compromise one account to gain access to everything. On top of that, two-factor authentication wasn’t activated on the Ring Camera, which would require an authorized individual to answer an email to confirm their identity.
With the Ring Camera compromised, hackers were able to see and hear everything that was going on in the children’s bedroom. While this hacker appears to be just a troublemaker, a child predator would just have to stay quiet and the family would never have known that their children were being spied on.
Now the Camera system has been taken down, the LeMay’s family passwords changed, and they’ll think twice before installing a new online security measure.
Source: Washington Post, WMCA