Baby monitors that are designed to protect children are now posing a major security risk.
The baby monitor has joined the long list of unlikely items that have been hacked in the past few weeks - a list that includes pacemakers, toilets, smart homes and cars.
In a report, ABC News described how a Houston couple had the nasty surprise of hearing a man in their two-year-old daughter's room, swearing and making lewd comments.
The voice, with a "British or European" accent, was coming from the baby monitor. When the couple entered the room, the voice began swearing at them too.
The baby monitor featured a camera that has been hacked to gain remote access to the device.
The father immediately disconnected the device, and tried to figure out what had occurred. He said he could not see the attacker, but could hear his voice, and knew he was controlling the camera.
The incident has led to fears that not only could some deviant people start using this weakness as a means to their perverted ends, but that baby monitors could be used by potential thieves to scope out houses.
Monitors that feature WiFi can be password protected. Parry Aftab, a lawyer who specialises in Internet privacy and security law, told ABC News that keeping passwords secret is vital, and people who have access to the PCs and passwords should be carefully guarded.
She said babysitters, housekeepers, or unattended cellphones are all possible sources for obtaining passwords.
Spy device
This is not the first time baby monitors have raised privacy issues. In 2009, Wired.com reported that Wes Denkov filed a suit against Toys 'R' Us after discovering he and his neighbour could spy on each other through baby monitors bought from the company.
He filed the proposed class action lawsuit after a neighbour, who had the same brand of baby monitor, told him that video and audio from Denkov's baby's room was showing up on the neighbour's monitor at times when it was set to the same channel.
Gavin Hetherington, MD of enterprise risk management services company Neworder Industries, says baby monitoring devices, particularly the newer models, make use of radio frequency.
He says baby monitors work on a radio frequency and are therefore set up to send and receive. "When setting up a baby monitor, it is possible to connect with a neighbour's radio frequency by accident and listen to what is going on in their home."
Hetherington says, as there is no USB or any additional plug-ins on baby monitors, the user is unable to load a level of security protection encryption as is possible with WiFi wireless devices like WPA2 encryption.
"I am not aware of any baby monitoring security in SA. I would stick to the old cord system as a matter of precaution," Hetherington concludes.
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