Your Smart Technology Could Be Inviting Hackers Into Your Home

SALT LAKE CITY (KUTV) — Imagine a hacker gaining access to your personal data by hacking into your light bulbs or smart speaker.

The list of smart devices connected to home Wi-Fi systems is growing, and some tech experts say these devices are more vulnerable to hacking than many people realize.

Consider all the things connected to your home internet: your doorbell camera, your smart appliances, your sprinkler system, your thermostat. Technicians call it the Internet of Things. But they also say these devices are collecting information from your network, and some experts say not all of them should be trusted.

KUTV reported on hackers’ newest favorite toy, the Flipper Zero. We showed you how it can clone key cards and open garage doors, but IT Now’s Laird Peterson showed you how hackers can use it to take over someone’s laptop.

Flipper was programmed to control the computer’s keyboard, open a notepad, and type messages. For someone as tech-savvy as Peterson, this was easy. Once this happens, the hacker has constant access to the victim’s network.

“As new vulnerabilities are discovered, it becomes easier to break into networks,” Peterson said.

Who creates these gaps? We do, every time we add a new device to our home Wi-Fi systems, including smart speakers or smart light bulbs.

“The more devices you have connected, the more potential entry points an attacker has. At home, I would be wary of door locks and garage door openers that are connected to the network,” said Mike Herrington, vice president of sales for IT Now.

Home Wi-Fi systems are designed with multiple networks in mind. People are supposed to put their home computers and banking information on one network and their smart speakers and other devices on another. But Herrington says most people don’t do that.

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“Many home users lack the skills and knowledge, or no one has advised them to consider it,” he said.

One of their clients fell victim to a printer being hacked and all the data it collected being stolen.

“If they’re not configured correctly, they can be a security hole,” Herrington said.

The problem, says Philip Lundrigan, professor of electrical engineering and computer science at Brigham Young University, is that devices are either fully trusted by the Wi-Fi network or not trusted at all.

“What if we partially trusted a device, allowing it to send data but not giving it access to our network or the internet?” he said.

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Lundrigan says many devices have Trojan-sniffer programs that detect other connected devices.

“They can look at Windows devices to see what vulnerabilities exist or if they’ve been updated recently,” Lundrigan said.

Other devices, such as smart home hubs, use Raspberry Pi. His students connected one to a 3D printer, then hacked into the network using the Raspberry Pi and disabled the printer.

Lundrigan says larger, well-known companies have security measures in place on their devices to limit this type of hacking. Smaller companies, however, may not be as trustworthy.

“I worry about devices from unknown companies that probably won’t exist in a year. What are they doing?” he said.

Lundrigan and his team have developed a new internet security protocol that they say allows the device to send limited data to the internet without connecting to the entire home network.