Friday, February 8, 2019

Google Should Force Better Security on Nest Users

Patrick Howell O’Neill:

It took a growing mountain of home hacking horror stories going viral, but Google on Wednesday finally took action by telling their customers to stop messing everything up.

In the last few weeks, multiple stories have emerged about owners of Nest security cameras—at least some of which have speakers through which users can talk—seeing their devices hijacked so that hackers can not only look into their homes but also terrorize unsuspecting families by issuing fake bomb threats and threatening to kidnap children.

[…]

Why is something as important as a live video stream from inside your home secured as weakly as a video game by default?

Previously: Nest Cam Waking in the Night.

Update (2019-02-11): Simone Manganelli:

This is quite rich coming from a company that doesn’t support 2-factor auth by app, only by horribly insecure SMS. :rolleyes:

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Related: Why don't all banks require 2FA?

(Because they save tons of cash by not mailing paper statements, and want to make signing up for online services as painless as possible, but you get the point.)

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