A concerned mother in Houston, Texas recently woke up to a horrifying discovery, after she learned that hackers have infiltrated her daughter"s bedroom security surveillance cameras and broadcasted it live publicly on the internet.
"I happened to get a text from a friend of mine that said she saw a picture on Facebook and she thought it was a picture of our daughters" room," according to the woman who wished to simply be called Jennifer, in an interview with ABC News. "They"re in my house. People are watching my kids in their home, dressing, sleeping, playing."
Another mother, Shelby Ivie, discovered the livestream feed after she and her sons were looking at live satellite images of Earth. They then stumbled into an app called "Live Camera Viewer, which shows feeds from around the world, like sporting events and traffic intersections. However, the app also shows private cameras, and this was where Ivie discovered the feed from Jennifer"s daughter"s bedroom.
Upon discovery, she quickly went to Facebook and alerted all members of Houston mothers" groups about the private camera feed. A few hours later, the picture made it back to Jennifer. She then consulted a security company, who was reportedly able to track the hack. The firm stated that the infiltration started with the video game Minecraft, which required a server name to be able to play.
"She obviously didn"t know a server name. She"s eight. She ended up looking up on YouTube "servers to play Minecraft" and she ended up giving a name," Jennifer said.
Moreover, the family"s IP address was supposedly acquired from her daughter"s iPad, where she played Minecraft. The perpetrators seems to have gotten access through that, either to the family"s router, or directly to the security cameras, whose default login credentials were never changed.
Jennifer has now banned her eight year old daughter from accessing the internet, and has also took the time to beef up their security system. "My advice is always watch to see what your kids are doing. My kids are now unfortunately no longer to be on the internet," she added. "Because I just can"t chance it again."
Back in 2014, a website that streams over 73,000 cameras was found, possibly invading the privacy of millions of people around the world. With breaches like these, we advise our readers to change the default passwords of not only their routers, but also the IP camera, to avoid such things to happen in the future.