Deerfield-News.com-Deerfield Beach, Fl-We found the below story to be of interest as “Ring” hacks have been reported across the country. Including the recent incident that has made national news where the hacker pretends to be Santa and was speaking to a child via RING. What was seen as a breakthrough in home security and was such a good idea that Amazon purchased the startup for a billion dollars. Certainly, Ring has helped homeowners and police alike to stay safer and capture criminals has now been weaponized by hackers. This story below happened in Broward County. We have contacted BSO for a copy of the incident report.
Users of Amazon’s popular Ring surveillance cameras have reported people hacking into the devices to spy on their homes and harass them.
Multiple families in different states have reported that hackers have spoken to them through the devices.
An individual who hacked into the Ring surveillance camera of Joshua Koop on December 12 bragged about watching unsuspecting homeowners and taunted a police officer.
In a video captured by Koop, the hacker can be heard saying he watched people engaged in intimate acts by monitoring Ring cameras inside homes.
He then says: “One time I got the cops called to somebody’s house and they had a gun out.”
Koop responds, “Really?” to which the hacker says, “They were taking the cameras and s*** to investigate.” The hacker also alluded to knowing the individual who hacked into the Ring camera in an 8-year-old girl’s room and tried to get her to use racial slurs.
“My friend was on the news,” he says. “Yeah, he was on ABC for spewing racial slurs and telling little kids he was Santa Claus.”
When a Broward County sheriff’s deputy arrived at Koop’s residence, the hacker commented on her appearance. He then tells Koop, “You’re getting hacked by a 5-year-old, dude.”
Koop told Storyful that he had a 15-minute conversation with the individual through the Ring camera, and the hacker claimed to have accessed thousands of cameras in the interiors of people’s homes. He said he has since removed all the Ring cameras from his home after watching footage on the other devices and realizing the hacker was watching him for hours.
“You can hear him breathing over the cameras while he watched me in the backyard,” he added.
n response to Koop, Ring said that “this was not a compromise of Ring’s systems.” The company advised customers to create strong passwords and ensure they were regularly updated. Credit: Joshua Koop via Storyful
