Found out my neighbor's smart doorbell was hacked because of a default password

I was chatting with my neighbor, Mark, yesterday and he told me his video doorbell started showing weird footage from someone else's house. He looked it up and found out he never changed the default password from 'admin123' that came with the device. A security blog said over 40% of smart home gadgets get hacked this way. I always thought those passwords were just a suggestion, but now I'm going through all my stuff to change them. Has anyone else had a scare like this with a smart device?

3 comments

3 Comments

kai_burns731d ago

Just realized my smart coffee maker still has the default password (I checked after reading this). So if someone hacks it, they're not stealing data, they're just making really weak coffee at 3am. I guess my laziness only hurts me, which is a weird kind of security feature. I'm going to go change it now before it starts ordering decaf on its own.

angelam8010h ago

Lol at the "weird kind of security feature" thing, that's actually pretty true. But seriously, change that password fast. I had my old smart plug on the default and it got weirdly added to some random person's app once, they kept turning my lamp on and off. Took forever to factory reset and reclaim it. It's not just about the coffee, it's about locking down your whole home network because that coffee maker is another open door. Use a password manager, it makes changing these one-off device logins way less painful.

stellat4618h ago

Mark's story is actually kind of scary, makes you realize how easy it is to forget. I had a similar panic last year with my wifi router, it was still on the default login from the box. Took me an afternoon to reset everything.