A family has a scary warning to share with parents after they had a chilling experience while operating a baby monitor inside their 3-year-old son’s bedroom.
The parents, Sarah and Jay, discovered a stranger had hacked into their son’s baby monitor, was spying on their boy and sometimes speaking disturbing messages, according to Fox19 News. Their boy had told them that he was scared at night because he could hear someone talking to him over the phone. They didn’t put two and two together until one night Sarah walked into her son’s room and heard a voice say, “wake up little boy, daddy’s looking for you.”
As Sarah walked into the room, Jay said he could hear the monitor continue to speak, saying, “look someone’s coming” or “someone’s coming into view.”
The couple also noticed that the night-vision lens was being controlled to follow their movements.
Alarmed, the couple called the manufacturer of the monitor. They said that the company explained that their wireless device might have been hacked and was being controlled by someone using a smartphone app or laptop.
Wireless devices such as baby monitor devices, smart TVs and appliances with Wi-Fi make it increasingly possible for strangers to remotely hack into your home.
Dave Hatter, a solutions expert with Infinity Partners, told the news station that he recommends people change both the Wi-Fi password and monitor’s camera password to two different codes, as extra protection. He also recommends checking a manufacturer’s website regularly for security updates and installing any that are available.
For example, the baby monitor camera had a known firmware vulnerability at the time of Jay and Sarah’s incident and had released an update to correct the problem. Jay and Sarah have since taken extra precautions to protect their privacy and hope that their story helps other parents become aware of this potential privacy risk.
Jay and Sarah are not the only parents to have reported that their baby monitor had been hacked. Marc Gilbert and his wife Lauren also say their 2-year-old daughter’s monitor was hacked. The incident was reported on Good Morning America.
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