Do you use Ring security cameras? You’d better read this!
- As users nationwide report that their Amazon Ring security cameras are being taken over by hackers, one family in Tennessee says that not only did their camera to their daughters’ bedroom get infiltrated but the hacker harassed their children through the camera’s two-way microphone.
- The mother of four told Today that she bought the Ring on a special Black Friday sale and installed it in the bedroom of two of her daughters. Video reveals a hacker watching and speaking to one of the girls while she came into her room, using racial slurs and telling her to “mess up the room” and “smash the TV”.
- The hacker also played Tiny Tim’s “Tiptoe Through The Tulips” which was used in a 2010 horror film and told the 8-year-old to trust him because he was Santa Claus. The girl, terrified, left her room where her parents discovered that the camera was hacked and disconnected it immediately.
- Hacked users aren’t happy with Amazon’s customer support for issuing “blanket statements” and even blaming the hacks on the users. The family says their children are afraid to sleep in their rooms now saying that they don’t feel safe in their own home.
STATEMENT FROM RING:
Customer trust is important to us and we take the security of our devices seriously. Our security team has investigated this incident and we have no evidence of an unauthorized intrusion or compromise of Ring’s systems or network.
Recently, we were made aware of an incident where malicious actors obtained some Ring users’ account credentials (e.g., username and password) from a separate, external, non-Ring service and reused them to log in to some Ring accounts. Unfortunately, when the same username and password is reused on multiple services, it’s possible for bad actors to gain access to many accounts.
Upon learning of the incident, we took appropriate actions to promptly block bad actors from known affected Ring accounts and affected users have been contacted. Consumers should always practice good password hygiene and we encourage Ring customers to change their passwords and enable two-factor authentication.
