Engineer Hacked Security Cameras In The US To Watch Couples Having Sex

Home security Engineer in the USA has unauthorized access to the images from private houses in over 9600 cases. This was made possible by a simple trick. Now he faces a prison sentence of up to five years.

The 35-year-old defendant from the Dallas area confessed in court. He is said to have “hacked” the surveillance cameras of customers in order to repeatedly switch to the video feeds. To do this, he simply added his e-mail address to the accounts of the persons concerned and then observed them unnoticed, as the system had no other security functions such as two-way authentication.

Read This: 2.4 million security cameras impacted by Wyze data leak

According to the Ars Technica report, he has also obtained owner permission a few times – pretending to need short-term access for maintenance purposes.

200 affected families

In the course of around four and a half years, he then accessed the accounts of over 200 customers more than 9600 times. He admitted watching videos of naked women and couples engaging in sexual activity. The former employee installed some of the cameras himself.

The case only came to light by accident. The security company where the defendant was employed had noticed the unauthorized access and blocked it: “As soon as we discovered this, the unauthorized access was revoked and the employee was terminated. We also reported him to the law enforcement authorities,” the company wrote. The whole thing has other consequences. Users of the system are now suing the company.

According to BuzzFeed News, the company was still trying to fend off the lawsuits through confidentiality agreements.