Black hat hackers can manipulate smart lights to spy on you and take your private info, a brand-new research study shows.
According to scientists at the University of Texas at San Antonio: the hack is accomplished when criminals reprogram infrared-enabled smart light bulbs to send out invisible light to access your private data via other smart devices on your WiFi network.
“Your smart bulb could come equipped with infrared capabilities, and most users don’t know that the invisible wave spectrum can be controlled,” said the UTSA director of the Security, Privacy, Trust and Ethics in Computing Research Lab. “You can misuse those lights.”
RELATED: WHO, Wuhan Biolab and Bill Gates Foundation Hacked
“Any data can be stolen: texts or images. Anything that is stored in a computer.”
The victim is unlikely to ever be aware of the breach because the hack is carried out inside their own internal Wi-Fi network instead of the Internet.
“Think of the bulb as another computer,” said the professor. “These bulbs are now poised to become a much more attractive target for exploitation even though they have very simple chips.”
The smart lights’ basic layout and also near-ubiquitous usage are what’s triggering the scientists to advise makers to do a far better task in stopping security exploits in their items.
Customers invested $8 billion acquiring smart light bulbs in 2014 & are anticipated to invest $28 billion on them in less than 10 years.
This tale is reminiscent of another recent story. One where TVs were supposedly transmitting ultrasonic sound-waves to neighboring smart devices in order to track the owner’s movements as well as swipe their private information.
That’s right, unnoticeable infrared light from smart light bulbs as well as undetectable audio frequencies from TVs can be manipulated to spy on unwary customers. It makes you wonder if the NSA invented this technology.
Leave a Reply