While doing dishes one evening last week, Marc Gilbert, of Houston, Texas heard something strange...a strange voice coming from his 2-year-old daughter's bedroom as she slept.
“Right away I knew something was wrong,” he told ABC News.
As he and his wife got closer to the room, they heard the voice calling his daughter an “effing moron,” and telling her,”‘wake up you little slut.”
The hacker then began shouting expletives at her parents and calling Gilbert a stupid moron and his wife a b****.
“At that point I ran over and disconnected it and tried to figure out what happened,” said Gilbert. “[I] Couldn’t see the guy. All you could do was hear his voice and [that] he was controlling the camera.”
Gilbert said he knew the hacker had seized control of the baby monitor's webcam when he noticed it was following them around the room.
"Allyson was born deaf, so she has cochlear implants. Thankfully we had them off and she didn't hear any of it and she slept right through it," Gilbert said.
A bit of security advice:
"Parry Aftab, a lawyer specializing in internet privacy and security law, said that such hacking is “very uncommon” but noted that is “one of our greatest fears that people are going to be able to access these baby monitors.”
Aftab said that if monitors are connected to Wi-Fi, keeping a password is imperative. Otherwise, she explained, anyone can access the Wi-Fi–and therefore has access to the monitor as well.
In order to prevent universal access, said Aftab, it is key to maintain the secrecy of passwords.
“Guard the people who have access to your computers and your passwords,” she advised. She noted that baby sitters, housekeepers, or unattended cell phones can all be sources to obtain passwords."
Gilbert responded to critics in the KTRK comments section who accused him of bringing this on himself by leaving the router unsecured.
"The router was password protected and the firewall was enabled," Gilbert wrote. "The IP camera was also password protected."
Concerned that this wasn't the first time the monitor was hacked, the Gilberts plan on going without the monitor now.
