Is Your Smart Home Spying on You?
Smart home technology is beloved by many for its ability to provide efficiency and convenience in our domestic lives. But can we really trust our smart home gadgets, or are they collecting more data than we realize? Can a smart home spy on you, and if so, what can you do to stay safe?
How Can Smart Tech Be Exploited?
Most tech products can be exploited in one way or another, especially if they support wireless connectivity. Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and NFC are all common in smart tech, as it allows them to communicate with other devices. But it’s these connections that an attacker can infiltrate and exploit to target you.
Take your smartphone, for example. You likely use Wi-Fi quite often on this device, be it to chat with friends, look something up, or stream videos. Whatever the reason may be, using Wi-Fi, and other wireless protocols, on your phone sometimes gives cybercriminals a way in.
For example, a cybercriminal could infiltrate your Wi-Fi connection in order to see what you’re doing online. Alternatively, a malicious actor could listen in on your phone calls or view the data you’re transferring via your Bluetooth connection.
It’s evident that smart tech is vulnerable to exploits, but how does such a scenario present itself in a smart home?
Smart homes can consist of various smart products including speakers, locks, cameras, and much more. These products rely on connectivity to make your life easier. Your smart speaker, for instance, can be controlled via your smartphone. Or, your smart lighting may connect to your smart home hub.
However, your smart home tech can also connect to exterior sources that reside outside your home. Say you asked your Alexa Dot speaker to give you tomorrow’s weather forecast. To access this information, Alexa needs to use the internet to find a viable resource, such as BBC Weather or The Weather Channel.
Having your smart home tech communicate with the outside world can be helpful, but also opens up a channel for malicious actors.
In a 2021, aWhich? press release, said that one home could possibly be exposed to more than 12,000 unknown scanning or hacking attempts from around the world in a single week.
How and Why Smart Homes Are Targeted
A smart home is impressive but also has risks. As previously stated, wireless connectivity is the main hacking vector cybercriminals use for smart home attacks.
A hacker could intercept a smart home product’s wireless connections in order to access data or gain remote control. An unsecured Wi-Fi network can play a big role in enabling these malicious actors, as well as poor device security.
So, why target a smart home?
Hacking a smart home to mess around with lighting or change TV channels isn’t really the goal for cybercriminals. As is often the case in cybercrime, data is the goal here.
Cybercriminals buy and sell data personal data on the dark web. Payment card details, login credentialPayment card details, login credentials, and social security numbers are all hot items for hackers, and this kind of data can sometimes be accessed via smart home hacks.
Corporate “Spying” in Smart Tech
Random cybercriminals are not all you have to be worried about in your smart home. There has also been a myriad of allegations made against smart home speaker providers, such as Amazon and Google, in relation to the unauthorized collection of data.
Let’s look at Amazon’s Echo Dot speaker, powered with Alexa, to understand this further.
A lot of conversation has arisen aroundwhether Alexa speakers are spying on users, fueled by the fact that, when turned on, Alexa is always listening. It is alleged that the speakers do this so that they’ll be able to pick up on a trigger word, such as “Alexa”, which users say in order to communicate with the speaker. But this round-the-clock voice monitoring is a concern for some, who believe that sensitive information can be recorded via this function.
It is worth noting that Alexa does not record and store all your conversations. But stories have come out about the smart speaker recording certain audio.
There have also been stories about user conversations being recorded and shared by Alexa as it’s possible to see in this video from CBS News.
In this story, an American woman received a phone call from her husband stating a woman he worked with received audio files from conversations had at their home. The audio, recorded by an Alexa speaker, included conversations the woman herself was having with others.
While this story only refers to one individual, the fact that this is possible is very concerning.
Other Kinds of Smart Home Spying
Big corporations aren’t the only concern when it comes to smart home security. Cybercriminals, and even people close to you, can exploit smart home technology to gather information about you or monitor your activity.
Echo speakers have a drop-in featurewhich allows two devices to communicate and become a two-way intercom. There is potential for this to be leveraged by a malicious user. If you’ve given authentication to pair with a device in the past, the user of that device can re-establish the connection at will. This gives them the ability to listen to the sounds occurring nearby your speaker, such as personal conversations. But for safety, the Echo makes it clear that a drop-in is occurring—it plays a chime at the beginning and the light ring remains green for the entirety of the drop-in. Plus you could always retract the drop-in authentication.
It was also reported byBleeping Computerthat Google Nest smart speakers can also be used for spying. In the article, Researcher Matt Kunze found and reported a software flaw that can be used to exploit Nest speakers. Kunze came across this attack while testing out his own Nest speaker, and found that “new accounts added using the Google Home app could send commands to it remotely via the cloud API.” The exploit was fixed by Google.
How to Stay Safe From Smart Home Spying
It’s important to remember that nothing will ever make your smart home devices 100% impenetrable. All devices stand some chance of being exploited, regardless how minimal.
However, if you’re worried about your smart devices spying on you, there are things you may do to up your security, including:
It’s Important to Secure Your Smart Home
Whether you’ve only got a few smart devices or are equipped with a vast system throughout your home, it’s crucial that you take the necessary steps to keep your tech, and yourself, safe. Smart home spying is very much real, so it’s wise to be cautious about what external devices you connect to, and the security integrity of the devices you own.
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The key is not to spook your friends with over-the-top shenanigans.
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