By analyzing commercial cameras, associated with a mobile application, which are used both to protect the house and to monitor babies, the experts discovered that their connection to the home network was not secure. The transmission of the password and the connection with the Wi-Fi terminal or the ADSL box, in particular, are carried out without encryption. This makes the hacker's job easier.

Worse: with each use, the mobile application sends a simple login code to the online server that manages the connection, and this server does not verify the code, granting authentication automatically. A hacker can therefore “register a different device using the code of the original device in order to deceive the server”, explain the researchers. He will then be able to retrieve the new camera password if the user has changed the default one. As a bonus, the hacker can also exploit the notifications: as soon as the user receives an alert, when the camera detects a sound or a suspicious movement in the house, he just has to intercept the communication, weakly secured, to get the word unencrypted password.

Result: “Anyone can use the application in the same way as the owner of the camera, estimates George Cabau, researcher at Bitdefender, that is to say turn on the audio, the microphone and the speaker to communicate with the children when the parents are absent or to have real-time access to the images of the children's room.

Conclusion, it is advisable to learn about the security of a camera before buying it, by consulting the opinions of other users and by reading the instructions carefully. But also to secure your smartphone and Wi-Fi network.

SERVICE : Discover our Amazon promo codes