Ring Cameras Are Being Hacked. Here’s What You Need to Know.
We live in an age where we have cameras everywhere. It’s likely one is on your phone, computer and even in every room of your home.
While they were meant to give us means of communication with friends, family and even ensure our family is safe, they’ve also become targets for hackers.
If you have a Ring camera you need to know that they are being hacked and how to keep you and your family safe from someone accessing it without your approval.
Ring Cameras Are Being Hacked. Here’s What You Need to Know.
You may have seen the story going around on the internet about a Ring camera that was hacked in an 8-year-old’s bedroom where they were able to talk to the little girl.
It is scary to think about that someone can be watching and listening to you and your family.
So, what do you do if you have one of these security camera’s in your home?
Well, you can get rid of them but then that just allows the hackers to win and you lose the security benefit from the device.
Instead, there are a few things you can do to ensure your cameras are not hacked and your family stays safe.
In fact, as I was writing this, I actually received an email from Ring with the subject line “Important Security Update from Ring”.
In the email, they talk about the security breech saying:
“You may have seen reports recently about our customers’ Ring accounts. Rest assured, we’ve investigated these incidents and did not find any indication of an unauthorized intrusion or compromise of Ring’s systems or network. However, even though Ring’s systems were not compromised, we do want to share how these issues occurred, and some easy steps you can take to further protect your Ring account and other online accounts.”
So, what was it? According to the email:
Malicious actors obtained some Ring users’ account credentials (e.g., username and password) from a separate, external, non-Ring service and reused them to log into some Ring accounts.
When people reuse the same username and password on multiple services, it’s possible for malicious actors to gain access to many accounts.
We’ve taken appropriate action to block these malicious actors and contacted all affected users directly.
How you can protect your family from hackers:
Ring has provided very detailed ways to keep your family safe from hackers but the basics include:
- Change your login information and passwords.
- Turn on two-factor authentication.
- Use strong passwords
- Update passwords every 3-6 months.
For now, it seems that cameras being hacked are ones that have easy passwords or ones that do not have two-factor authentication enabled.
