It's a story that's likely to be the source of nightmares for most parents: a family in Texas says their baby monitor was hacked and the person on the other side threatened to kidnap their newborn.
While authorities are still looking for the person responsible in that case, we wanted to make sure you know how to protect the baby monitors in your home so you don't become a victim as well.
The most important thing to know is almost any baby monitor is vulnerable to attack unless you take steps to secure it. We'll focus on WiFi-enabled video monitors, as they're most at risk.
These monitors are called internet protocol, or IP, cameras because they use the internet and your local area network, or LAN, to communicate with smart devices. Because of that, they can potentially be accessed by anyone in the world, from criminals to trolls.
So where do you start to protect the baby monitors in your home? First, you need to secure your wireless router. This means updating the device's firmware and disabling remote access to it.
(Note: If you're not sure how to do this, there are walkthrough guides available online with easy-to-follow instructions. For instance, Wikihow.com has an extremely helpful article that spells it all out.)
Next, set a password for your baby monitor and make sure it's a very strong password. It should be something unique and use a blend of letters, both lower and upper case, and numbers.
Then change or remove the default login. Even if you've set up your login information, you should make sure that the old default login credentials have been removed or changed.
You'll want to update the camera's firmware. The process is different for every manufacturer. Google how to do this for your particular model. That's what I did and I found multiple tutorials right away.
Afterward, you'll want to disable certain features. If your camera has it, disable DDNS, port forwarding or UPnP. Also, disable remote access to your baby camera, because that can put you at risk.
If remote access to your camera is a must-have, however, make sure you take the following steps:
- Change the port that's used to access your camera. The default is 80, and that's the one that hackers will check first. Change it to something above 8100, if you can.
- Periodically check the logs for unauthorized access. When you are looking at your log, look for unusual things, like IP addresses you don't recognize or strange access times.
I know that's a lot of steps, but if you follow them, tech experts say you will have protected all of the typical ways hackers can prey on your devices.