Yahoo News ‘I can see you in the bed’: Hacker uses Amazon Ring camera to shout at woman as she went to sleep
A hacker exploited an Amazon-owned home-security device to yell at a woman as she slept – demanding she “wake the f*** up”.
The Ring camera was designed to give users peace of mind, and was used by an Atlanta woman who has asked to remain anonymous to keep an eye on her pet dog Beau – according to local broadcaster WSB-TV2.
However as she lay in bed ready to go to sleep she heard a cough over the intercom. Seeing that the camera was live, she messaged her partner to ask why he was watching her and the pet. He replied that he was not.
Moments later a man’s voice could be heard over the camera, saying “I can see you in the bed, come on, wake the f*** up.”
The man went on to clap and say “wake up” before calling out to her dog.
“I was terrified. I literally could not move my body” the woman said.
“I just want people to be aware. We got this Ring camera thinking about one thing --- watching our puppy. Not somebody looking at us”.
She added that she had not set up two-factor authentication to allow for greater security.
It is not the first time the bell has been accessed by strangers – with a mother releasing video last week of a hacker talking to her eight-year-old daughter through a Ring camera set up in the child’s bedroom.
Ashley LeMay, a nurse from Desoto County, Mississippi, purchased the Ring security camera as a way of watching over her three daughters when she was required to work night shifts.
According to Ms LeMay, she had purchased the camera during Black Friday, after another mum had recommended it.
But a few days later a hacker managed to play ominous music through the device – and began to tell her daughter “I’m your best friend, I’m Santa Claus,”.
Ms LeMay told broadcaster WMC. “They could have watched them sleeping, changing. I mean they could have seen all kinds of things.
A Ring spokesperson said: “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.”
Read more
Video shows hacker talking to eight-year-old child through Ring camera
