3 minutes
In brief: An issue with the integration between Google's Nest Hub and
Xiaomi's Miija smart camera can apparently lead to someone seeing the
camera feeds from a different home that uses the same setup. The two
companies are currently working to solve the issue, but this is a new
reminder that the convenience of the smart home can come at the cost of
security and privacy.
As we accumulate smart devices in our increasingly digital lives, it's
easy to lose track of the many security and privacy risks they pose.
Some people are entrenched in one of the larger ecosystems from the
likes of Google and Samsung, but more often than not there are homes
with a mix of devices from different vendors, which is an additional
source of problems.
Recently, Reddit user Dio-V found a peculiar image displayed by his
Google Nest Hub, which was supposed to show a live feed from a Xiaomi
Miija camera. On closer inspection, the image appeared to originate from
various random homes that were using the same setup.
This has prompted Google to disable the integration between Xiaomi
devices and Google Home and Google Nest while it's working on a fix for
the issue.
Xiaomi told Engadget that it is aware of the problem, which it described
as a caching issue. The good news is that only 1,044 users could have
been affected, and the company explained that the exact conditions to
trigger the reception of stills from random cameras could've been met in
just a handful of cases. Those of you who own such a setup might also
be pleased to know the issue doesn't occur if the camera is linked to
the Mi Home app.
Apparently, the problem has its roots in a cache update that happened on
December 26, 2019, which was supposed to improve the overall streaming
quality of the Xiaomi Mi Home Security Camera Basic 1080p models.
Xiaomi isn't the only company to deal with such issues on its smart
things. Just last month, security camera maker Wyze reported that it
accidentally left a database on an insecure server, leaking the details
of more than 2.4 million customers. And even Google failed to reveal the
presence of a microphone in its Nest Secure system, which
unsurprisingly led to a lot of angry customers worried about their
privacy.
On a more positive note, tech giants like Apple, Amazon and Google,
along with the Zigbee Alliance, are scrambling to develop an open-source
standard for smart home devices that should make it harder for issues
like these to manifest in future products.
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