Amazon and Ring’s ‘defective design’ lets hackers access your cameras, CA lawsuit says

Amazon and Ring, the home security company owned by Amazon, will soon have to answer for their hacking incidents, according to a new lawsuit brought against the companies.

John Baker Orange filed a class-action lawsuit on Dec. 26 in California, alleging that Amazon and Ring’s “lax security standards” and “defective design” left their cameras vulnerable to hackers.

Orange, who is from Jefferson County, Alabama, bought a Ring camera for his house in July 2019, according to the lawsuit. He claims that a hacker got access to the camera while his children were outside playing basketball and encouraged them to move closer to the camera. Once Orange found out what happened, he changed the password and started using two-factor authentication.

He claims that Ring was “blaming customers for failing to create strong security passwords” to “distance itself from liability.” The lawsuit also says that the Ring cameras will only work when they’re connected to a Wi-Fi network, but that Amazon and Ring didn’t design the cameras to be protected against a cyber-attack.

“Notably, Ring only required users enter a basic password and did not offer or did not compel two-factor authentication,” the suit says.

In the wake of the hacking incidents, Ring told The Verge that people may have been using reused passwords that were previously leaked elsewhere. But later that month, thousands of “emails, passwords, time zones, and names” for Ring cameras were leaked online.

Orange isn’t the only one who had his Ring camera hacked in recent months.

A hacker got access to a Mississippi family’s Ring camera and used the speaker to talk to an 8-year-old girl.

Ashley LeMay told WMC that she got the camera so she could watch over her daughter while she was at work.

“I did a lot of research on these before I got them. You know, I really felt like it was safe,” she said.

Four days after LeMay installed the camera, her daughter Alyssa heard a voice coming from her room. The video footage, obtained by WMC, shows Tiny Tim’s “Tiptoe Through the Tulips” playing over the speaker before an unknown man began speaking.

“I’m your best friend. I’m Santa Claus,” the voice said. “I’m Santa Claus. Don’t you want to be my best friend?”

A Florida family’s Ring camera was also hacked and the unknown man began making racist comments about the couple’s son, NBC2 reported.

“Is your kid a baboon, like the monkey?” the hacker asked.

This story was originally published December 27, 2019 at 8:37 AM with the headline "Amazon and Ring’s ‘defective design’ lets hackers access your cameras, CA lawsuit says."