Amazon Issues Patch for Ring Video Doorbell Security Flaw. Estimated 200M+ IoT Products Vulnerable to Hacking.

By B.N. Frank

Amazon Ring doorbells are very popular right now for homeowners and their neighborhood police departments. However, Internet of Things (IoT) technology has a 74% failure rate, which explains why security experts are constantly issuing warnings about it (see 1, 2).

Unfortunately, none of this has stopped individuals, business, scientists, and others from wanting to use IoT for surveillance, automated vehicles, and more.

Thanks to Cloud Wedge for this article about the recent IoT debacle which of course includes more warnings about IoT and rightfully so.

Amazon’s Ring video doorbell recently received a patch from the company to deal with a severe security flaw. It allowed a proximity malicious user to spoof the doorbell so that when the user connected to reprogram it, the hacker would be able to sniff the credentials for the network. Amazon fixed the issue in September, but it demonstrates a genuine risk of penetration coming from IoT connected devices that need to be rectified.

IoT Has a History of Bad Security

IoT devices have been slow in developing security and have historically had a bad reputation for remaining secure on a private network. Because of how IoT devices are connected, a single machine could lead to a hacker being able to take over all of the other devices on a network. The result could be leaked information, stolen processing capacity, or even monitoring data that passes through the device.

Earlier this year, a report was published showing a security vulnerability that existed on over 200 million IoT devices, with the potential for even more millions of systems to be affected.