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BGU Study Finds Baby Monitors Easy to Hack

BGU Study Finds Baby Monitors Easy to Hack

March 14, 2018

Homeland & Cyber Security

New York Post – You bought your baby monitor for peace of mind, but it could be inviting unwanted strangers into your home.

Dr. Yossi Oren

According to new research by BGU cybersecurity experts, the common household appliance is an easy target for hacking.

“It is truly frightening how easily a criminal, voyeur or pedophile can take over a baby monitor,” says Dr. Yossi Oren, a senior lecturer in BGU’s Department of Software and Information Systems Engineering and head of the Implementation Security and Side-Channel Attacks Lab at Cyber@BGU.

His research team looked into a number of smart-home devices, including baby monitors, security cameras and doorbells, finding that most were extremely simple to intercept.

“Poor password protection is a major risk factor when it comes to smart-home device security,” explains Dr. Oren.

It turns out that many smart-home devices share the same default passwords — and that those passwords are easily found via Google. Since many consumers don’t bother to change default device passwords, they’re left vulnerable to security breaches.

Imitating hackers, the researchers quickly took advantage of these weak points. “Using these devices in our lab, we were able to play loud music through a baby monitor, turn off a thermostat and turn on a camera remotely, much to the concern of our researchers who themselves use these products,” says Dr. Oren.

Hacking took less than half an hour in some cases.

Read more on the New York Post website >>