Baby monitors, cars and your sex life: Nothing is safe from hackers
By Ted Rath, Postmedia Network First posted: Thursday, July 23, 2015 02:15 PM EDT | Updated: Thursday, July 23, 2015 02:29 PM EDT
Next on the hacker's list: baby monitors.
Police say a parent in southwestern Ontario was rocking a child to sleep in the nursery earlier this month when the web-linked baby monitor was remotely activated. The camera played eerie music and a voice told the parent and child they were being watched.
The frightening episode was just the latest in a long list of new hacks. But unlike past attacks that might have compromised our financial information or provided the world with nude photos of movie stars, these latest ones are hitting us on a far more personal level -- in our homes, our cars and our sex lives.
Were you expecting anything different in your wired world?
This week's hack into the Ashley Madison website -- which uses the slogan: "Life is short. Have an affair" -- might have threatened to only expose cheats, but it speaks to a much bigger threat to our privacy, columnist Natasha Lennard argued on fusion.net.
"The hack bolsters a dangerous transparency ethic, asserting that if people have something to hide, they shouldn't be doing it. It's this exact ethic that meant major tech companies would work in concert with the government to create and uphold the vast surveillance nexus under (and through) which we live."
But the danger could be much greater than creepy watchers.
A pair of hackers in the U.S. recently showed Wired magazine how they could remotely control a Jeep Cherokee -- taking over the speed, the radio, windshield wipers and brakes all via laptop computer miles away.
They warned of the dangers if such powers got into the wrong hands.
"If consumers don't realize this is an issue, they should, and they should start complaining to carmakers," hacker Charlie Miller told Wired. "This might be the kind of software bug most likely to kill someone."
Baby monitors, cars and your sex life: Nothing is safe from hackers | Ontario |
By Ted Rath, Postmedia Network First posted: Thursday, July 23, 2015 02:15 PM EDT | Updated: Thursday, July 23, 2015 02:29 PM EDT
Next on the hacker's list: baby monitors.
Police say a parent in southwestern Ontario was rocking a child to sleep in the nursery earlier this month when the web-linked baby monitor was remotely activated. The camera played eerie music and a voice told the parent and child they were being watched.
The frightening episode was just the latest in a long list of new hacks. But unlike past attacks that might have compromised our financial information or provided the world with nude photos of movie stars, these latest ones are hitting us on a far more personal level -- in our homes, our cars and our sex lives.
Were you expecting anything different in your wired world?
This week's hack into the Ashley Madison website -- which uses the slogan: "Life is short. Have an affair" -- might have threatened to only expose cheats, but it speaks to a much bigger threat to our privacy, columnist Natasha Lennard argued on fusion.net.
"The hack bolsters a dangerous transparency ethic, asserting that if people have something to hide, they shouldn't be doing it. It's this exact ethic that meant major tech companies would work in concert with the government to create and uphold the vast surveillance nexus under (and through) which we live."
But the danger could be much greater than creepy watchers.
A pair of hackers in the U.S. recently showed Wired magazine how they could remotely control a Jeep Cherokee -- taking over the speed, the radio, windshield wipers and brakes all via laptop computer miles away.
They warned of the dangers if such powers got into the wrong hands.
"If consumers don't realize this is an issue, they should, and they should start complaining to carmakers," hacker Charlie Miller told Wired. "This might be the kind of software bug most likely to kill someone."
Baby monitors, cars and your sex life: Nothing is safe from hackers | Ontario |