A mother from Austin, Texas, said she had to take down her baby monitor for good after she discovered that someone had hacked it and taken control over the device more than one time.
The mother, who wanted to remain anonymous, said this happened despite the fact that she used a custom password to access the device. She says she had changed the factory default password since she first bought the baby monitor, as the device’s manual and most security experts advise customers to do.
First signs that something was off appeared two weeks ago, when she and her husband noticed the baby monitor’s camera starting to blink, a sign that someone had logged in and using the device.
This past Thursday, the intrusion was more evident when the camera started to pan left and right. At first, the parents adjusted the camera, thinking it was a bug.
As soon as they moved the camera to its initial position, it started to pan the room again. Frightened, the parents immediately unplugged the camera and called the Austin Police Department, who then brought in the FBI.
The mother is legitimately scared and worried because of the whole incident. “I breastfeed her [my daughter] in that room. After bath time we take her in there to dress her for nighttime. It’s just really scary,” the mother told 12News on Saturday, talking about the possibility of a pedophile watching her daughter.
The danger is real and has happened before. In August, another Texas mother found the baby monitor feed from her daughter’s camera online.
An Android app had discovered her improperly secured device and was allowing anyone with an Android phone to connect to the kid’s room and watch the child around the clock.
This time around the baby monitor device had been secured with a custom password against illegal access, but investigators think the intruders hacked the family’s home router and extracted the baby monitor’s password from there.