To Nest or Not to Nest

We all love the convenience that technology delivers. Push of a button, a car arrives to pick you up, buy with one click, monitor your house via Nest security camera. It is all great until we get in trouble.

Andy Gregg from Phoenix Arizona experienced this first hand. Upon returning home he heard an unfamiliar voice in his house. Burglars is the first thing that came to his mind. But after waking around the house he found no evidence of breaking an entry. The voice however was present in his home. Michael followed it and realized that the sound came from the Nest security camera.

On the other side was a white hat hacker who did not reveal his name but said he is with the group unanimous. The hacker was able to break into the device and monitor Michael’s house remotely in same way as Michael could in his app. The hacker told Andy that he couldn’t see any of the video being captured by the camera and couldn’t see his exact location, but warned him that type of information would be easy for a more malicious actor to find if they wanted to by geo locating his IP address.

This was disturbing at the least and Michael freaked out. The hacker suggested to report this incident to Nest. Michael did as well as removed the camera all together.

Nest parent company Google said that it is aware that passwords exposed in other breaches may be used to access its cameras. The company noted the cameras can’t be controlled wirelessly without a username and password created by the device owner. Nest devices do not come with default logins that can easily be manipulated to hijack the cameras.

Now his home security system is a dog.

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