Tag Archive for: Baby

Has your baby monitor been hacked by cybercrooks?


High-tech baby monitors could be hacked by cybercrooks, whose aim is to use them as entry points to other devices.

One would think the bed of a family’s most vulnerable member — a baby — would be safe from cybercrooks wanting to steal personal data.

Well, that’s not true.

FortiGuard Labs, which operates a cybersecurity data centre in Burnaby, has found at least one baby monitor that has crawled into cribs.

“In September 2021, we noticed attacks attempting to exploit a remote code execution vulnerability in Motorola’s Halo+ Baby Monitor,” the company said in its Global Threat Landscape Report released in February. “The attacks that followed allowed actors into one of the most intimate parts of people’s homes via full access to the baby monitor’s display device, camera, accompanying app, and data shared between the devices.”

Derek Manky, FortiGuard’s chief security strategist and vice-president of global threat intelligence, said the issue resonates on the privacy protection front.

“It’s a baby monitor today; what’s tomorrow?” he asked.

The Motorola model had a remote access flaw, the reported noted. 

One might argue it’s just a baby monitor and that the baby has nothing to hide.

But Manky said the monitor could be used as a jumping-off point; crooks use it to gain access to other home devices that are connected across the home computer network. The cyber expert pointed to phones, watches, fridges, toys, medical sensors and doorbells being hacked.

With the surge in home-based work due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the number of home devices has also surged, broadening what is known as the “attack surface” that cybercrooks can target, Manky added.

Manky stressed not using default passwords on such devices. Change them, he said.

And make sure companies providing such devices have software upgrades and patches to fix vulnerabilities fraudsters can use to get into your home systems.

One thing people can do is use the segmented zones on routers. Use a variety of zones to isolate your devices, he explained.

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Hackers Attacked a Hospital and Allegedly Killed a Newborn Baby


Image by Getty / Futurism

A woman who gave birth at a hospital that had been brought to its knees by a ransomware hack is now suing over the death of her newborn daughter. The death appears to mark the first official casualty of a ransomware hack, in which hackers seize control of a computer network and demand payment, usually in cryptocurrency, to restore it — a crime that, clearly, can be lifethreatening when directed at critical infrastructure like hospitals.

When the hackers took control of Springhill Medical Center in Alabama in 2019, the hospital refused to pay the ransom or acknowledge the attack, The Wall Street Journal reports, opting instead to mitigate the damage by shutting off its network and attempting to carry on as usual. Jobs that used to be automated suddenly fell on junior staffers, and doctors and nurses suddenly had to treat patients without access to crucial digital records or computer equipment.

A week after the attack, Teiranni Kidd went to Springhill Medical Center to deliver her daughter, Nicko Silar, according to the WSJ. Without the monitors that doctors and nurses use to keep an eye on the vitals of patients and their soon-to-be born children, the staff missed that Nicko had a dangerously accelerated heartbeat — a sign that Nicko’s umbilical cord was wrapped around her neck. Nicko was born unresponsive and with severe brain damage, and died nine months later.

Since then, Kidd has sued the hospital, and documents revealed that the medical staff texted one another about how the death would have been easily preventable. Had they been able to see the warning signs — it’s unclear if anyone did at the time — they would have safely delivered Nicko via caesarian section.

The hacker hasn’t been publicly identified, but the WSJ reports that it’s likely the Russian Ryuk gang, which has targeted at least 235 hospitals and dozens of other healthcare facilities with ransomware attacks since 2018.

Outside of this case, there hasn’t been a recorded death caused by a ransomware attack, though Joshua Corman, a senior advisor for the Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency told the WSJ that the hacks could make…

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