Tag Archive for: homes

Former ADT technician admits to hacking into customer’s accounts to watch real-time video feeds in homes


DALLAS, Texas — A former security technician faces up to five years in prison after admitting to authorities that he repeatedly hacked into home video camera feeds.

Telesforo Aviles, 35, pleaded guilty Thursday in federal court to charges of computer fraud, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Texas.

Aviles worked for ADT security and accessed around 200 customer accounts more than 9,600 times, the FBI said.

“Mr. Aviles admits that contrary to company policy, he routinely added his personal email address to customers’ “ADT Pulse” accounts, giving himself real-time access to the video feeds from their homes,” U.S. Attorney spokesperson Erin Dooley said in a statement. “In some instances, he claimed he needed to add himself temporarily in order to “test” the system; in other instances, he added himself without their knowledge.”

The incidents took place over a period of four and a half years.

ADT officials told the Dallas Morning News that the affected customers were alerted to the intrusions and that the company “deeply regrets” the incidents.

“This defendant, entrusted with safeguarding customers’ homes, instead intruded on their most intimate moments,” said Acting U.S. Attorney Prerak Shah in a statement. “We are glad to hold him accountable for this disgusting betrayal of trust.”

“Mr. Aviles took note of which homes had attractive women, then repeatedly logged into these customers’ accounts in order to view their footage for sexual gratification,” authorities said. “Plea papers indicate he watched numerous videos of naked women and couples engaging in sexual activity inside their homes.”

Authorities said the case is a reminder for people to practice ‘cyber hygiene by reviewing authorized users and routinely changing passwords.

If you believe you’ve become a victim of cybercrime, you can contact the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center at 1-800-225-5324.

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Meet The Billionaires Behind Signal And Telegram, Two New Online Homes For Angry Conservatives


In 2018, Brian Acton, the billionaire WhatsApp cofounder, committed several fateful actions. He had quit Facebook a few months earlier, and in March, he took his rift with the company public by firing off an angry tweet—“It is time. #deleteFacebook”—just as the company that had bought his app descended into scandal over its data-sharing practices and status as a hotbed for conservative misinformation. Nearly at the same time, Acton was funneling $50 million into a new non-profit, the Signal Foundation, naming himself its executive chairman. The group’s overriding goal: finance a three-year-old app called Signal, which allowed users to send end-to-end encrypted messages.

Signal offered easy communication and secure, total anonymity. With the new funding, it wouldn’t need to cave to commercial interests and sell ads, something Acton hated about Facebook. Grandly, he envisioned Signal making “private communication accessible and ubiquitous,” he told Forbes in 2018, and the app has largely lived up to his expectations. It is especially valued among journalists and activists like the ones who planned the Black Lives Matter protests. But in an ironic twist, the app is poised to become a new digital haven for conservatives—just as Facebook before it. These right-wing users are drawn to it for the same reasons BLM organizers liked it: It offers the ability to plan and communicate en masse without worrying about the app exerting content-moderation policies or aiding authorities pursuing charges against them. Signal doesn’t appear to have any such policies and doesn’t have access to users’ messages, theoretically making it impossible to cooperate with a police investigation.

“The use of Signal and Telegram is really dangerous. They appear to be at this moment welcoming hateful users who’ve been kicked off other platforms or been made to feel unwelcome on other platforms,” says Harry Fernandez, a director at Change the Terms, a…

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Smashing Security #119: Hijacked homes, porn passports, and ransomware regret

All this and much more is discussed in the latest edition of the award-winning “Smashing Security” podcast by computer security veterans Graham Cluley and Carole Theriault, joined this week by …
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