Imagine someone hacking into a smart device that manages communications from your home. From there, or from any other anonymous call service, the hacker calls the police and reports a false crime: a robbery, someone with a gun in your house, mistreatment… Police send several agents to the home and the hacker records everything with a security camera also hacked.
That operation, which appears to have come out of a movie, is becoming increasingly common, and the FBI has had to start working on the issue to reduce the number of cases that are occurring.
The hackers in question manage to invade cameras that are not well protected (often with passwords that have previously been filtered over the Internet), and make anonymous calls from services such as Discord bots or some of the dark web.
These incidents, called hack & swat, always have the same goal: When the police respond to the residence, the offender looks at the live footage and relates to the police responding through the camera and speakers. In some cases, the offender also broadcasts the incident live on online platforms.
Such incidents have increased in the United States in recent years and have even resulted in people being killed by accidental shooting, but now, with smart devices hacked, the subject has become more sophisticated.
Hackers sometimes identified social events that were broadcast online, such as weddings or church gatherings, and made the anonymous call to the police for a police operation to be broadcast, now with cameras connected, it’s all easier.
The FBI has said they are now working with device providers to advise customers on how they might select better passwords for their devices. As for device owners, the same advice remains valid, you must always use complex and unique passwords for each of our accounts.
