Baby Monitors May Be Vulnerable to Hackers, Report Finds
A new report finds security flaws may leave monitors vulnerable to hacking.
— -- Baby monitors offer the convenience of live-streaming videos of children straight to their parents’ smartphones and tablets. But a new report warns that the children's parents might not be the only ones watching.
The report, released Wednesday by tech security firm Rapid7, put nine different Internet-connected baby monitors to the test.
Of the nine kinds of baby monitors tested, one received a grade “D” and the other eight monitors received grades of “F.”
“Overall, we did find some devices that had some very easy-to-exploit issues,” Mark Stanislav, the study’s author, told ABC News.
Potential vulnerabilities found in the monitors included accessing personal information from your Wi-Fi network and even potentially giving attackers real-time control of the device.
Heather Schreck says that is what happened to the baby monitor in the bedroom of her 10-month-old daughter.
“I heard a voice and it was screaming at my daughter, screaming, ‘Wake up baby. Wake up baby,’” Schreck said.
Schreck says the voice came from hackers who used an Internet “back door” to take control of the monitor’s camera.
Rapid7 recommends disabling unnecessary features like video recording and storing footage on the Internet in order to make your child’s baby monitor more safe.
The company also recommends parents never connect the devices to a public Wi-Fi account, use cellular data for a monitor and, just in case, unplug the monitor when it is not in use.
A manufacturer’s association representing the makers of baby monitors says parents should contact the manufacturer if they have any safety questions.
“If a consumer is concerned about the safety of their baby monitor, they should contact the manufacturer directly,” the Juvenile Products Manufacturers Association said, in part, in statement to ABC News.