Security Report Slams Amazon, Walmart For Selling Video Doorbells With Alarming Flaws
Today, a report surfaced about Chinese manufacturer Eken, which has a handful of other brands in the space like Tuck, Fishbot, and Rakeblue. Across all of these brands, Eken has effectively the same security doorbell product with slight changes to cosmetics. With the vast product portfolio, researchers from Consumer Reports decided to dig into the cameras to see how good (or bad) they were. What they found was almost laughable, save for how scary it actually is.
Privacy and security test engineer Steve Blair of CR compromised one of these cameras from 2,923 miles away and viewed images from doorbells at Consumer Reports employees’ homes. With this, a savvy enough attacker could “take control of the video doorbell on their target’s home, watching when they and their family members come and go.”
This is thanks to the fact that “these doorbells expose your home IP address and WiFi network name to the internet without encryption, potentially opening your home network to online criminals,” and it is basically a matter of getting URL to access the cameras and compromise your privacy. That's obviously concerning.
To add insult to injury, “the doorbells also lack a visible ID issued by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) that’s required by the agency’s regulations, making them illegal to distribute in the U.S,” according to the security report. With these discoveries, Consumer Reports not only got in touch with Eken and Tuck, but also Amazon, Walmart, Sears, Shein, and Temu to report the problems with the devices.
Hopefully, all of these vendors end up pulling the insecure devices. That said, if you access your home doorbell camera with the Aiwit app, perhaps you should consider getting a new security doorbell.
