At the beginning of December it became known that the surveillance camera manufacturer Ring handled the security of the customer recordings quite negligently with its products. Other providers of corresponding camera systems were also suspected of not adequately securing their networks against third parties. A few incidents were then public, in which strangers used the cameras in children’s rooms to observe foreign children and communicate with them via the built-in audio system.
Stranger talks to children
As theOnline magazine Gizmodonow writes, one of these incidents now leads to a class action lawsuit against Amazon and Ring in the United States. A father enforced the lawsuit after finding access from a stranger. His three children, ages 7, 9 and 10, had played basketball outside when they were spoken to by an unknown voice through the built-in speaker system. The stranger spoke directly to the children, the lawsuit said, commenting on their basketball game and encouraging them to get closer to the camera.
When the father found out about the incident, he changed the password of the camera and activated two-factor authentication. The lawsuit now claims that the access was a “direct and immediate” consequence of Ring’s failure to properly secure its camera systems against unauthorized access. Ring did not meet this most basic obligation because it had not ensured that the WLAN-enabled cameras were protected against cyber attacks.
Other parents who had observed similar incidents are said to have already joined the lawsuit.
Data on a leak
The Amazon subsidiary initially relied on the fact that the affected users themselves had failed to provide secure access with strong passwords or the activation of two-way authentication. However, the Gizmodo report now also mentions that the plaintiff confirmed that he had received an email from Ring, in which it was clarified that his login data had been found in the event of a data leak.
No further details are known yet, you will probably have to wait for the complaint.
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