Internet of Bings

[Dr Sardonicus]

(URL snipped)

Originally Posted by retina

Amazon's Halo wristband: the fitness tracker that listens to your mood

And if when Amazon has some new product they require you to buy then they will cut support for this little spying thing and turn it into a paper weight.[/url]
<snip>
Plus, all these monitoring things/apps have never shown any improvement to health. Basically they are useless (yes, they are useless, and you don't need one). But people are still duped by the marketing about how much their lives will improve. Complete nonsense.

Reminds me of "mood rings," which instead of a sparkly had some liquid crystal that made shimmery colors when it warmed up. They were quite the novelty for a while, commanding fairly hefty price tags. The last time I saw them being sold, it was in "gum ball machine" type vending machines.

[Nick]

Hacked home cams used to livestream police raids in swatting attacks
https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-55499164

[retina]

Originally Posted by retina

https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-54436575

It's a bad idea of course, but made worse by having to include the manufacturer in all actions.

... and it got used by a hacker. Well of course it did, you didn't expect anything else did you?

https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/new...chastity-belt/

Following the disclosure, an attacker started targeting Qiui Cellmate mobile app users who controlled the smart toy and locked the chastity device. Victims were asked to pay 0.02 bitcoins, around $270 at the time of the attacks.

And I "love" this final sentence:

Qiui addressed the issues causing all the trouble, so the latest version of the app should be safe to use.

I doubt that very much. They only fixed what has been found so far. That in no way means they fixed all issues. And it still leaves the manufacture in the loop for all "transactions", so you will perpetually be dependant upon them to always be around and never have problems.

[Dr Sardonicus]

Originally Posted by retina

And I "love" this final sentence:

I think my favorite part was

Soon after the attacks started, a flood of complaints came from victim users reporting that they could no longer control the smart adult toy. Some of them fell victim to the attacker multiple times.

There's an old saying. "Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me!

[kladner]

Originally Posted by Dr Sardonicus

I think my favorite part wasThere's an old saying. "Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me!

I thought that was "Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice.....can't fool me again." -GWB

[retina]

Originally Posted by Nick

Hacked home cams used to livestream police raids in swatting attacks
https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-55499164

Those remote faceless companies running the "security" surveillance systems can always be trusted, no matter what, right?

https://gizmodo.com/a-home-security-...ems-1846111569

A former employee of prominent home security company ADT has admitted that he hacked into the surveillance feeds of dozens of customer homes, doing so primarily to spy on naked women or to leer at unsuspecting couples while they had sex.

Telesforo Aviles, 35, pleaded guilty to a count of computer fraud in federal court this week, confessing that he inappropriately accessed the accounts of customers some 9,600 times over the course of several years. He is alleged to have done this to over 200 customers.

Authorities say that the IT technician “took note of which homes had attractive women, then repeatedly logged into these customers’ accounts in order to view their footage for sexual gratification.” He did this by adding his personal email address to customer accounts, which ultimately hooked him into “real-time access to the video feeds from their homes.”

<...>

“Some of these customers were previous victims of assault. They were relying on ADT to provide them with a sense of safety and security. Instead, they were victimized again,” said an attorney involved in one of the cases, highlighting the psychological effects of such an invasion of privacy.

I'm not convinced that "hacked" is the correct term there. But whatever, many people still don't seem to understand that all of this stuff is run by ordinary people using ordinary systems, and they can be abused in perfectly ordinary ways.

And MS has your bitlocker keys. Nothing can possibly go wrong.

[Dr Sardonicus]

Originally Posted by retina

Those remote faceless companies running the "security" surveillance systems can always be trusted, no matter what, right?

https://gizmodo.com/a-home-security-...ems-1846111569 I'm not convinced that "hacked" is the correct term there. But whatever, many people still don't seem to understand that all of this stuff is run by ordinary people using ordinary systems, and they can be abused in perfectly ordinary ways.
<snip>

And, of course, the company wanted to do right by its injured customers...

ADT employee spied on customers for years through their security cameras, lawsuits claim

MAY 18, 2020

Hundreds of customers of ADT Security Services were spied on through security cameras installed inside and outside of their homes, two federal lawsuits filed Monday are claiming.

ADT, headquartered in Boca Raton, "failed to provide rudimentary safeguards" to prevent an employee from gaining remote access to the customers' cameras over a seven-year period, a news release from the Dallas-based Fears Nachawati Law Firm states.

ADT notified customers of the breaches and then tried to pay them off if they agreed not to reveal them publicly, according to the suits filed in U.S. District Court in Fort Lauderdale.

"In a frantic effort to mitigate and hide its actions, ADT began a campaign to call all affected account holders and secure a release and confidentiality agreement in exchange for a monetary payment representing a fraction of the value of their claims," one of the suits says.

Yuck. I think I'm gonna hurl.

They aren't the first accusations that ADT failed to protect its security systems from unwanted intrusions. In 2017, the company agreed to pay $16 million to settle class actions suits in Illinois, Arizona, Florida and California claiming it systems were vulnerable to hacking because the company failed to encrypt them.

Oh, joy, now the dry heaves...

[retina]

And that is only the shenanigans that has been discovered and reported.

I'd expect perhaps 1% (maybe less) to be discovered. And a fraction of those discovered to be reported, the rest kept quiet, or expanded upon when the boss decides he likes it.

[retina]

https://old.reddit.com/r/theinternet...lership_for_a/

Dude comes straight from the dealership for a car-seat installation, but halfway through the car disables itself (I'm guessing some anti-tamper safeguard). Hilariously, the boys at Ferrari can't remotely fix it because there's no reception undergound.

https://www.bitdefender.com/box/blog...dult-websites/

... clips stolen from more than 50,000 hacked cameras have been uploaded to pornographic websites, and X-rated footage sold to people prepared to pay a subscription fee of US $150.

As Singapore’s The New Paper describes, videos surreptitiously stolen from hacked cameras feature couples, breastfeeding mums, and even teenagers and children – with many captured in “various states of undress or compromising positions.”

https://uploadvr.com/facebook-accoun...t-paperweight/

Quest 2 is the first Oculus headset to require a Facebook account at launch. False positives from its account verification system may be leaving some buyers with no choice but to return it.

We’re seeing reports from Quest 2 buyers who aren’t on Facebook finding difficulty creating an account. Facebook’s account verification system- reportedly administered by a machine learning agent– may ask for photographic evidence of identity. That evidence seems to be reviewed by a human, since it can apparently take weeks to process.

Others trying to re-activate old accounts to use their brand new Quest 2 also report instant suspensions. Trying to create a new account also fails.

[LaurV]

Ha!

(making retina happy )

[retina]

https://dailycaller.com/2021/03/11/v...curity-breach/

Super Admin accounts could turn off a “privacy mode” activated by customers that was meant to prevent employees from viewing their cameras. Workers were required to log their use of Super Admin accounts and provide justification for their use, but that wasn’t much of a deterrent, according to one former employee. “Nobody cared about checking the logs. You could put whatever you wanted in that note; you could even just enter a single space,” they told Bloomberg.

The hackers were also able to gain access to customers’ personal and financial information, according to The Verge. The hack is America’s highest-profile security breach since the SolarWinds hack of Microsoft, which gave hackers access to Microsoft user information.