You’ve seen all the time in movies when the bad guys hacked into public surveillance cameras and could see what’s going on out there. It is actually not difficult to hack into most security surveillance systems for commercial or residential buildings and particularly those wireless ones. Theses cameras that are used by retailers, hotels, and elevators, are often configured insecurely. Many are preconfigured with simple to access passwords and you can try as many times as you wish to attempt to guess it. Start with “1111”, “1010”, “1234” or “1001” or try “admin”.
And the same problem exists for video conferencing systems, imagine you’re on a conference call with your team on developing the next secret product. Sometimes you can random call in and get access to these conference calls where VCs are talking to start-ups or people are pitching their latest ideas.
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What about all those smart gadgets or devices that we increasing rely on in our everyday's work. Not only do we store a large amount of information on our gadgets, they are increasingly becoming our gateway to online services. Our smartphones stay with us 24 hours a day, giving us ample opportunity to leave them behind in a gym, taxi or bar. If the device is lost our information is vulnerable. Most smart device users aren't prepared to handle the multitude of technical and security challenges that come with carrying one.
Smartphones that aren’t properly decommissioned also leave us vulnerable. As smartphone use becomes even more prevalent, we can expect to see more malware and other viruses targeting both Android and Apple devices. A serious security flaw was recently uncovered, affecting some Samsung Android smartphones. The flaw allowed hackers to erase the device remotely, simply by sending an SMS or getting the user to click on a URL. How many employees have personal phones on the corporate network that you don't know about? While the use of smart devices may keep employees connected, efficient and, in most cases, productive, allowing a personal device to connect to the corporate network without vetting could compromise your business.
Threats to mobile security aren’t always obvious. It’s surprisingly easy to hack a smart device. Easier still for users to download a game or another similarly innocuous app that, once installed, turns that phone into a bug. PlaceRaider, a malware created by the United States Navy to showcase Android vulnerabilities, does just that. The app activates the phone's camera and other sensors, collects data to create a 3D image of the phone's physical location including sensitive data that may be visible on computer monitors or desks.
And we all use some Bluebooth enabled accessories. Bluetooth is a key vulnerability, there is a hack called Blue Scanner that searches out for the Bluetooth enabled devices and then extract as the much information as possible for a each newly discovered device. It is easy to do.
We love our gadgets but, at the risk of sounding dramatic, they have the potential to turn against us. Your smart phone probbaly knows more about your than Google. So from now on, just assume that everything is hackable. So when you need to be in secretive meeting, put all your electornics in a bag and make sure the room has not video confenecing or security cameras installed.