A hacker accessed a Ring camera and harassed an 8-year-old

washingtonpost.com

20 points·zeppelin_head··4 comments

Buy a surveillance device for your daughter, get a surveillance device on your daughter.

The main problem is that prolific advertising has been able to convince most everyone (not in the tech sector) that it's a good idea to fill your home with surveillance devices. This wasn't even some pragmatic compromise like a baby cam, but rather installing a security camera in an 8 year old's bedroom!

It's unfortunate that these kind of results are one of the few speedbumps to the surveillance industry's advertising. Although failing fast with petty crime is much nicer than failing long-term with highly organized crime!

On the one hand, if this really is a result of hackers logging in with a re-used password that was found in another companies breach then I don't know what Amazon is really suppose to do. On the other hand, telling the family that and saying "nothing we could have done" seems like a terribly in-sufficient response. I empathize with both parties here, though obviously more so with the family. Maybe Amazon should require 2FA for logging into Ring?

Amazon should be proactively monitoring that their users haven't reused breached passwords. Every responsible service should be doing this.

A) We should stop putting devices that are in the home onto the internet.

If you want to have a security camera, keep it limited to the local network only.

B) People need to stop having a default assumption that these are secure. Mentally assume they are public by default, and don't put them in children's rooms for gods-sake!

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