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Comment by whatshisface | Hacker News Reader

There was a security breach. The product was operating outside of the behavior range that the parents were told about. If I tell you that my toaster will not catch on fire and then it burns your house down while you use it as instructed, I can't argue that you "didn't understand" its behavior - sure, you didn't predict that it would self-immolate, but is it really your job to reverse-engineer my product to check for poor design?

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My understanding is that the password was compromised. It is well within expected behavior for Nest to allow someone with the right credentials to access the connected cameras etc. This isn't a matter of expecting the consumer to reverse-engineer their product and perform a security audit before allowing themselves to trust it, it's a matter of expecting the consumer to understand what credentials are.

Being able to access the camera remotely given the correct password is absolutely within the behaviour range that users are told about. It's the entire point of the product. Do they want remote access or not? If so, then it's the user's responsibility to provision that access appropriately. Passwords and 2-factor might be too complicated for some, but what else do we have?

>We have seen instances where a small number of Nest customers have re-used passwords that were previously exposed through breaches on other websites, and made public. None of these breaches involved Nest. This exposes these customers to other people using the credentials to log into their Nest account.

Subtly, Nest did not actually claim that the attacker had a correct password. For all we know this instance was a breach.

Of course they are not going to give specific details about a particular customer's security incidents in a public statement. And of course they can not publicly claim that they've never had a security breach because it's impossible to know that for sure. I'm not sure how they could make the statement any more specific than they already have.

It is not the toaster company's responsibility to make sure no one gets in your house and puts a fork in your toaster and leaves it running.

Your analogy implies that compromised IoT devices are some rare statistical anomaly that nobody could possibly predict ever happening.

Your reply implies that consumers have a deep understanding of an industry that's outside of their areas of expertise.

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