TMZ is reporting that Ring and its parent company, Amazon, are being sued in federal court in California, claiming they have failed to protect users.
Ring made headlines a couple of weeks ago when a number of cameras where hacked. In one particularly disturbing incident, a camera in an 8 year-old girl’s room was hacked, with the hacker talking to her, claiming to be her best friend. There have been other incidents as well, with a woman woken by a hacker shouting at her and a couple subjected to racist comments about their son.
To make matters worse, VICE tested the Ring devices and found their security was abysmal. There was no way to see if anyone else was logged in to the camera, nor was there a log of who had accessed the device in the past. In other words, once a camera is hacked, there is virtually no way of knowing it has been compromised.
The lawsuit’s plaintiff, John Baker Orange, seems to have a similar story as the other hacking incidents. He claims that “someone hacked into his outdoor security cameras and started commenting on his kids who were playing basketball … encouraging them to get closer to the camera.” If the claim is true, it could be the earliest known example of Rings being maliciously hacked, as Orange claims the incident occurred last July.
For a company specializing in security hardware, failure to provide basic security measures is beyond abysmal—it is unforgivable. It’s a safe bet this won’t be the first lawsuit Ring and Amazon face.