Household Hacking

Web-connected devices ranging from coffee-makers to baby monitors can be hacked and used to carry out huge cyber attacks, experts have warned.

17:29 02 November 2016

Experts have warned that hackers can use web-connected devices in your home to launch huge cyber attacks. This can cause serious concerns as more and more household devices are now sharing data about the most mundane of household habits. 

 

Denis Makrushin, a security researcher at Kaspersky Lab, said: 'Cyber-attacks conducted by seemingly harmless connected devices are no longer just the stuff of movies, or even of the future, but are a very real and current threat,'

 

His firm tested connected household devices to see how vulnerable they were to attack.

 

'When it comes to app-controlled coffeemakers, it’s not even necessary for an attacker to be on the same network as the victim. 

 

'The coffeemaker examined during another Kaspersky Lab experiment was sending enough unencrypted information for an attacker to discover the password for the coffeemaker owner’s entire Wi-Fi network.'

 

Last year, hackers targeted servers of a Dynamic Network Services provider called Dyn. It is thought that the attackers recruited 100,000 connected devices to send requests to these servers. Due to the volume of requests, people where prevented from accessing everything from Netflix to Facebook.