Hackers Took Over A Smart Home Device To Spam Nuclear Missile Alerts

The Mercury News reported that this weekend, a leisurely afternoon of a California family was ruined when they heard an emergency alert coming from the smart home system in their own living room. Together with the alert sound came a warning that a nuclear war had erupted and missiles were heading to some cities in the U.S.

In an interview, Laura Lyons, a member of the family said:

Of course, no missiles were fired. Apparently, the Lyons family became the victim of hackers’ cruel prank. These hackers succeeded in gaining access to the family’s Nest security camera which was then exploited for terrorism purpose. This is a prime example for the possibility of a dark future where smart home systems were taken advantage by people to carry out horrendous psychological pranks on innocent users.

The Lyons family is not the only family suffering from this. In December, the Nest system of a Texas family was also accessed by hackers. These hackers then threatened to kidnap the baby of the family. In September, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation decided to dig deep into smart home systems’ vulnerabilities. With the family’s permission, they hired hackers to break into devices from Nest, Amazon, and Wink owned by the family.

When being asked for comments on this issue. Nest has yet to respond. However, Lyons told the Mercury News that she got the information from a customer support representative that the situation was likely the result of a data breach.

Lyons continued: