Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Family traumatized after Nest system hacked by stranger

fox4kc.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 75 posts

Re: Family traumatized after Nest system hacked by stranger

#61

Post by freehunter »

cgriswald wrote: post #58
esotericn wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A camera pointing at your face should be assumed to be turned on and recording you. A camera pointing at your face hooked up to the Internet should be assumed to be broadcasting that information to the world. We know this intuitively. Humans dislike eye contact from strangers because of what it implies. Cameras don't hit the same basic reflexes (likely because we've optimized them that way). If we haven't done a good…

I wonder if this is a generational thing. I'm gen x and cameras absolutely hit the 'same basic reflexes' for me. When someone has their camera/phone out I sense where it is looking at least as much as I sense where people's eyes are looking. My millenial girlfriend, my youngest siblings and cousins, etc., don't seem to be aware; nor do they have the same ideas of rudeness/politeness with camera use that I have.

My wife and I are both millennials and all the time she'll be playing with a Snapchat filter holding her phone straight out, and I'll ask her why she's filming me. From the back of the phone, it's completely indistinguishable.

Re: Family traumatized after Nest system hacked by stranger

#62

Post by danso »

bluetidepro wrote: post #22

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)?

Hacker News is not just about "hacking". I posted it here as a reflection of the status quo about what people (don't) know about the implications of connecting home services to a centralized network.

Re: Family traumatized after Nest system hacked by stranger

#63

Post by zamazingo »

heavymark wrote: post #59

Doesn’t appear to have been hacked like all the hacks we hear about rather, the user probably reused their password on another service that was hacked and they didn’t change their passwords as hopefully instructed when that occurred. Enabling 2 factor would resolve this in most alll cases easily for the user. Versus the user having to use a password management app and constantly monitor their security and update acco…

> Enabling 2 factor

Unfortunately, they do not provide "true" 2fa, only through text message.

Re: Family traumatized after Nest system hacked by stranger

#64

Post by jancsika »

bluetidepro wrote: post #22

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)?

How is two-factor authentication not a prerequisite for using Nest in the first place?

I know we've moved as a society fairly quickly from expecting users to generate entropy to something that is actually secure. So it's understandable that some companies lag behind.

But Google is attempting to connect everything they can to the internet. If the bar for them isn't to at least prevent the easiest, most obvious hack from causing catastrophes then we're living in an idiocracy.

A user reusing passwords is bad. But in a civilized technological society the consequences for doing that cannot be a disembodied voice appearing communicating with one's child to give them nightmares.

Google's security teams surely know you can't "educate the user" to stop reusing passwords. If their official response is, "We did the right thing by suggesting two-factor authentication," then it doesn't matter how many engineers they throw at the problem.

Evil is afoot.

Re: Family traumatized after Nest system hacked by stranger

#65

Post by cgriswald »

christophilus wrote: post #45
smacktoward wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It's the part that talks about how there's a camera and a speaker on an IoT device that's connected to the internet. Seriously, though, my neighbor's entire house is wired up. His lights, his camera / security system, his shades, his music player, his TV... just about everything is integrated into Alexa. It boggles my mind why an otherwise intelligent person would do this.

It's crazy to me that this is the way things are, and that a lot of these companies charge a service fee for remote access. A better way would be VPN offerings for the home from ISPs, and the devices working only locally.

Re: Family traumatized after Nest system hacked by stranger

#66

Post by hkchad »

jancsika wrote: post #64
bluetidepro wrote: post #22

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)?

How is two-factor authentication not a prerequisite for using Nest in the first place? I know we've moved as a society fairly quickly from expecting users to generate entropy to something that is actually secure. So it's understandable that some companies lag behind. But Google is attempting to connect everything they can to the internet. If the bar for them isn't to at least prevent the easiest, most obvious hack fr…

They only seem to support SMS 2 factor, yippee...almost worse than just have a really good password.

Re: Family traumatized after Nest system hacked by stranger

#67

Post by bluetidepro »

danso wrote: post #62
bluetidepro wrote: post #22

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)?

Hacker News is not just about "hacking". I posted it here as a reflection of the status quo about what people (don't) know about the implications of connecting home services to a centralized network.

I wasn't referring to "hacking" the way you took it. I meant it in terms of how the article used it, I totally agree and understand Hacker News is not just about hacking, in the context you mean. I just meant like this article, in general, is pretty low quality and just about poor password usage from the person they interviewed. No data breach or anything in terms of Nest.

Re: Family traumatized after Nest system hacked by stranger

#68

Post by smt88 »

bluetidepro wrote: post #22

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)?

Local Fox affiliates != Fox News

Still low quality, but for different reasons.

Re: Family traumatized after Nest system hacked by stranger

#69

Post by paulcole »

hadrien01 wrote: post #30
paulcole wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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).

> because the website doesn't have the right to exclude you from accessing the content even if you have not opted-in to trackers

Of course it does! It's their website. You don't have some god-given right to view fox4kc.com on your own terms.

Re: Family traumatized after Nest system hacked by stranger

#70

Post by shiftoutbox »

When will people realize that saying “Long Island ,NY” isn’t an actual location. There are 4 counties in “Long Island “ there are very different parts . For example in the Town of Hempstead in southern Nassau county you have the likes of Joey buttafucco , however in North Hempstead in the northern western section of Nassau county you have some of the priciest homes in the county in the village of sands point . That doesn’t even take into account Suffolk county , and kings and queens counties which are part of Long Island . So reporter ; where in the 450+ square miles of Long Island did this take place ? Why even say Long Island ?
Post reply on HN