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Your baby monitor is vulnerable to hackers

Parents, check your security settings.

Photo of Kevin Collier

Kevin Collier

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Your baby is as vulnerable to hackers as you are.

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new study from security firm Rapid7 has revealed that the baby-monitor industry is rife with easily exploited problems.

The widespread flaws represent yet another problem with the nascent and much-touted Internet of Things, the Web-connected ecosystem of everyday devices and appliances. Because of differing security standards, the IoT is rife with vulnerabilities. Hackers recently killed a Jeep’s engine while it was driving by remotely accessing its software, prompting a recall of 1.4 million cars.

Rapid7 said that all nine of the baby-monitor brands it tested had major security flaws. As is the case in other industries, the sophistication and effect of those flaws were varied.

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iBaby Labs, which lets registered camera owners log into a website to view a live feed, also makes it easy for hackers to improperly access an account by letting them randomly guess its password an unlimited number of times, a technique known as brute-forcing.

Philips gave each of its In.Sight cameras the same default username and password, which meant that anyone could access a poorly configured camera just by knowing that information. Another company, Summer Infant, lets anyone with a camera’s ID number create an account for that camera—without even notifying the person who originally registered the device.

Rapid7 noted that it wasn’t aware of any particular large-scale effort to hack such devices, although some white-hat hackers have used the vulnerabilities to set up livestreams of multiple baby monitors to draw attention to the issue.

Of the nine major baby-monitor manufacturers, only one—Philips—acknowledged Rapid7’s findings and pledged to address them.

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H/T CS Monitor | Photo via dagoaty/Flickr (CC BY 2.0)

 
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