Communications of the ACM
Off-the-Shelf Smart Devices Found Easy to Hack
Ben-Gurion University of the Negev researchers say commercially available smart devices such as baby monitors, home security cameras, doorbells, and thermostats can be easily hacked for nefarious purposes.
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Researchers at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev (BGU) in Israel have determined commercially available smart devices such as baby monitors, home security cameras, doorbells, and thermostats can be easily hacked for nefarious purposes.
"It only took 30 minutes to find passwords for most of the devices and some of them were found only through a Google search of the brand," says BGU's Omer Shwartz.
BGU professor Yossi Oren is urging manufacturers to stop using easy and hard-coded passwords, disable remote access capabilities, and complicate the obtaining of information from shared ports in Internet of Things devices.
The team also offer tips to secure such devices, including buying them only from reputable manufacturers and sellers, avoiding used devices, researching each device online for a default password to change before installation, using passwords with at least 16 letters, avoiding password-sharing by multiple devices, regularly updating software from reputable manufacturers, and weighing the benefits/risks of an Internet connection.
From American Associates, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev
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