This is a firsthand account of the fear that hackers can create.
A compromised username and password let a hacker take control of a Nest owner's account and camera, which is one of the attack vectors for Internet of Things (IoT) and smart devices.
Laura Lyons was at her Bay Area home along with her husband and her 8-year-old when a man's voice announced, "North Korea has launched three intercontinental ballistic missiles toward the United States, and the United States has launched missiles in retaliation."
The warning continued with details on targeted locations, and it urged people to take shelter. And chances are good the hacker was watching the family panic on their own camera, which the hacker now controlled.
Watch the video from the San Jose Mercury News, which broke the story this week:
Google-owned Nest alerted some customers in 2018 that pwned user names and passwords for some accounts had been discovered, but it never revealed where those compromised credentials had come from.
There have been several reports of hacked Nest cameras in the last few weeks, but Nest has not posted anything about the incidents on its website or media page.
And while the extent of these IoT device hackings remains a mystery, we know the IoT attack surface is rapidly expanding, based on what Amazon Alexa says we bought during the 2018 holiday season.
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