A distraught Ohio couple reported to have been awakened in the middle of the night upon hearing a man scream at their sleeping 10-month-old daughter Emma to wake up and seeing the baby monitor move without them controlling it. It wasn't a paranormal phenomenon, but a hacker taking control of the Internet-connected baby monitor.
The couple, Adam and Heather Schreck, recalls how it all started.
"About the time I saw it [baby monitor] moving, I also heard a voice again start screaming at my daughter," Heather said.
Adam quickly went to his daughter's room after realizing the urgency of the situation. Next thing he saw was the camera swiftly turned straight to him, before the unseen invader began to curse him. He unplugged the camera at once and the nightmare ended.
The Schrecks aren't alone. A Texas-based family says they went through a similar hacking experience in August when their two-year-old daughter's baby monitor also got hacked. Marc Gilbert narrates that he heard a man screaming expletives at her daughter who turned out to be deaf and whose cochlear implants were off.
The manufacturer of the hacked baby monitors in those two incidents is Foscam that sells such devices for $200. In the latest hacking of the baby monitor, Foscam explains that the baby monitor, a three-year-old model, needed an update of its firmware.
"Updating firmware is extremely important, especially if the devices in question are more than six months old," Foscam says in an emailed statement to NBC News.
The company also said that all Internet-connected devices run the risk of possible hacking.
Reports say that hacking a baby monitor operating on a wireless Internet connectivity is in fact pretty simple for hackers.
"It happens more often than you would think," security consultant Brandan Geise at SecureState also tells NBC News.
The Consumer Affairs portal, meanwhile, reminds consumers to remain vigilant always, especially when trying to connect any home system to the Internet of Wi-Fi.
"However, the Schrecks were particularly vulnerable because their Foscam camera had a known security flaw in its firmware; Foscam had released a patch, but the Schrecks did not know about it," says the portal, explaining that users should not forget all about it after installation.
Security experts disclose that though hackers usually target computer webcams, any device that is connected to the Internet is a "cyber-loophole" for firm intruders to obtain access.
"Sophisticated hackers know they can use this as a launching-off point to get into your network and potentially steal your ID or launch malicious attacks," says Dave Hatter, an Infinity Partners solutions expert.
Apparently, not only webcams and baby monitors are susceptible to hacking, report says. Other home appliances such as smart refrigerators, washing machine, toasters, televisions and even the human body for those pacemakers and defibrillators implants are also prone to hacking.
