A Lesson to Learn – If it is Connected It can Be Hacked

I remember years ago at CES 2013, when this young entrepreneur scheduled an interview with me to show off a prototype for his new Ring security device. At the time, IoT was in its infancy, and this product was quite innovative. However, like most of these IoT devices, they have always been designed for marketability and usability over security. Security usually is not even on the radar. What I find most interesting is that for Ring — they were in the security business — protecting your home and family. Fast forward to 2019. After being sold to Amazon for over 1B in 2018, lax security, has made it a bad year for the company. That allowed the password for your Wi-Fi network to be broadcast in plain text for anyone nearby to see it, capture it, and use it to access your home network and any sensitive information on it or any devices connected to it. According to researchers, this software flaw left users’ network security wide open. Ring has since corrected this issue, and patches are currently available.