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Family traumatized after Nest system hacked by stranger

fox4kc.com

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Re: Family traumatized after Nest system hacked by stranger

#21

Post by whatshisface »

warent wrote: post #10

The big takeaway here is that grown humans are mindlessly putting technology they don't understand in front of their children, and then they're blaming the technology for their own ignorance. Alright, maybe I'm being a little extreme or cynical, and my goal here isn't victim blaming, clearly this sort of thing should not have to be a concern for people, but still... Don't they have a duty to understand what they're e…

There was a security breach. The product was operating outside of the behavior range that the parents were told about. If I tell you that my toaster will not catch on fire and then it burns your house down while you use it as instructed, I can't argue that you "didn't understand" its behavior - sure, you didn't predict that it would self-immolate, but is it really your job to reverse-engineer my product to check for poor design?

Re: Family traumatized after Nest system hacked by stranger

#22

Post by bluetidepro »

Why is this low quality fear mongering Fox news post on the top page of HN? There is no evidence of "hacking" here, and Nest's official response was that the person had a poor or breached password. I get that this would be a nightmare situation, but it has nothing to do with Nest (at least with the current info)?

Re: Family traumatized after Nest system hacked by stranger

#23

Post by SmooL »

So it seems that the nest itself was secured with a repeated password, and there was no 2FA on their account (which they could, and were encouraged, to add).

On one hand, it's easy to dismiss this as the nest owners being naive with internet security. This is incident was easily avoidable if the owners had put in the tiniest more effort. I think it's _fair_ to expect people who own these devices to know the basics about how to not get exploited from it.

On the flip side, although I think that knowing the basics is a _fair_ expectation, I don't think it's _pragmatic_. These devices are only going to get more powerful in their abilities, only going to get more ubiquitous in their distribution, and only going to get more opaque as to their inner workings. I don't think it's unreasonable that manufactures _force_ a higher level of security on such devices.

Re: Family traumatized after Nest system hacked by stranger

#24

Post by smacktoward »

warent wrote: post #10

The big takeaway here is that grown humans are mindlessly putting technology they don't understand in front of their children, and then they're blaming the technology for their own ignorance. Alright, maybe I'm being a little extreme or cynical, and my goal here isn't victim blaming, clearly this sort of thing should not have to be a concern for people, but still... Don't they have a duty to understand what they're e…

I must have missed the part in the Nest manual where they told you to expect complete strangers to be able to watch you and speak to you through it.

Re: Family traumatized after Nest system hacked by stranger

#25

Post by staticassertion »

rashomon wrote: post #7

How is poor password security "hacking"? If you choose to use the same password on all of your devices then that is solely on you.

Nah, Nest could enforce 2FA, just as a basic example of how they could take responsibility for the safety of their consumers.

Re: Family traumatized after Nest system hacked by stranger

#26

Post by smacktoward »

rashomon wrote: post #7

How is poor password security "hacking"? If you choose to use the same password on all of your devices then that is solely on you.

It's true, maintaining proper password hygiene is easy! See https://jasonlefkowitz.net/2015/09/ask-mr-science-how-to-sec... for details.

Re: Family traumatized after Nest system hacked by stranger

#27

Post by codetrotter »

gattilorenz wrote: post #3
Cynddl wrote: post #2

> Sorry, this content is not available in your region. I guess Fox 4 KC didn't want to implement the GDPR… But what happens with the GDPR if I, a European citizen in Europe, access this website (blocking EU IP addresses) using a VPN? The heuristic they use (IP address = country on which the user lives) is not a perfect method to assess whether they need to apply the GDPR regulation.

Strangely, it does not work using archive.is either. But I think this is the same event: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6338113/Familys-Nes...

> Strangely, it does not work using archive.is either.

That’s because archive.is crawlers are hosted in Netherlands, Europe.

Re: Family traumatized after Nest system hacked by stranger

#28

Post by chadash »

This story is pretty creepy, but at this point, people need to own up to the idea that weak passwords and passwords that are re-used across sites are going to be compromised at some point [1]. There's nothing Nest can really do about this, other than to mandate two-factor auth, which most people don't seem to like [2].

[1] I'm happy to see in my personal experience that even my non-technical friends are starting to use password managers. [2] According to https://hackernoon.com/why-do-most-people-ignore-two-factor-..., "less than 10 percent of active Google accounts use two-factor authentication. Furthermore, as per findings of the Pew Research Center, password managers are only used by approximately 12 percent of Americans." If people aren't using 2FA for their gmail account, which is arguably the most important account to protect, then they probably aren't using it anywhere else.

Re: Family traumatized after Nest system hacked by stranger

#29

Post by mh8h »

adventured wrote: post #15
Cynddl wrote: post #2

> Sorry, this content is not available in your region. I guess Fox 4 KC didn't want to implement the GDPR… But what happens with the GDPR if I, a European citizen in Europe, access this website (blocking EU IP addresses) using a VPN? The heuristic they use (IP address = country on which the user lives) is not a perfect method to assess whether they need to apply the GDPR regulation.

> But what happens with the GDPR if I, a European citizen in Europe, access this website (blocking EU IP addresses) using a VPN? WDAF Kansas City, is a Fox affiliate located out of Missouri state. GDPR is an EU regulation, not a global regulation, nor a US regulation. The EU and GDPR has no legal standing over most media companies in the US and very few US Web sites, because they do no business in the EU and are not…

If I - an American citizen - access a server in China, US laws are not what govern what they can do with my information. That is governed by Chinese law.

The US government apparently has a different interpretation. For example, they asked Microsoft for the information of a user from the servers in Ireland.

Re: Family traumatized after Nest system hacked by stranger

#30

Post by hadrien01 »

paulcole wrote: post #11
Cynddl wrote: post #2

> Sorry, this content is not available in your region. I guess Fox 4 KC didn't want to implement the GDPR… But what happens with the GDPR if I, a European citizen in Europe, access this website (blocking EU IP addresses) using a VPN? The heuristic they use (IP address = country on which the user lives) is not a perfect method to assess whether they need to apply the GDPR regulation.

> I guess Fox 4 KC didn't want to implement the GDPR I think the content you're seeing, "Sorry, this content is not available in your region." is an implementation of GDPR compliance, no?

It's not an implementation of GDPR because the website doesn't have the right to exclude you from accessing the content even if you have not opted-in to trackers. It's a refusal to implement GDPR and having any business with European citizens (which for a local network affiliate is not a hard choice to make).
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