Ring Faces Intense Scrutiny After Reports That Thousands of Users’ Information Was Online -- Security Today

Ring Faces Intense Scrutiny After Reports That Thousands of Users’ Information Was Online

The security camera company owned by Amazon says that there was not a breach of its servers and blame the issue on lax cybersecurity practices by users.

By Haley Samsel
Dec 23, 2019

Although Ring, the security company owned by Amazon, has been blaming recent reports of hacking on lax cybersecurity practices by customers, as news outlets and security researchers discover lists of usernames and passwords online.

Last week, BuzzFeed News was alerted to the compromising of 3,672 Ring camera accounts, which exposed log-in emails, passwords, time zones and the names that customers gave to their cameras, including location information like “bedroom” or “front door.” In addition, TechCrunch reported that a security researcher discovered a list of 1,562 unique email addresses and passwords on the dark web.

If hackers successfully breached Ring accounts, as at least some people have achieved, they can gain access to live camera footage associated with an account as well as payment information and Ring speakers installed in the home.

Researchers told BuzzFeed that the formatting of the list appears to be from a company database, not from credential stuffing, a practice that involves uses special software to rapidly enter previously compromised emails and passwords to get access to an account. For example, a hacker could use a list of emails and passwords from the Capitol One breach and check them to see if customers used the same information for their Ring account.

“One could argue that the person maybe got these through credential stuffing,” Cooper Quintin, a security researcher with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, told BuzzFeed. “But if that was the case, why did that person go through and add the information about names of camera and time zones?”

In response to the BuzzFeed report, a Ring spokesperson said that the data was not compromised as part of a breach to its systems.

“Our security team has investigated these incidents and we have no evidence of an unauthorized intrusion or compromise of Ring’s systems or network,” the spokesperson said. “It is not uncommon for bad actors to harvest data from other company's data breaches and create lists like this so that other bad actors can attempt to gain access to other services.”

Although Ring says it has notified affected users, many told TechCrunch and BuzzFeed that they were not contacted by the company.

In a blog post published on Dec. 8, Ring appeared to blame the account takeovers on customers’ lack of cybersecurity protections, including not using two-factor authentication to guard their accounts and using the same emails and passwords over and over again.

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