The advent of smartphones has also brought us smart, well, everything. Smart light bulbs, smart cameras for your home, and of course, smart hubs so you can access your voice assistant of choice anywhere in your home and interact with all of these things. But of course, one big concern remains, and that is the privacy factor. After all, not everyone feels comfortable having an Internet-connected, always-on camera watching you while you sleep or while you’re at home. These concerns may very well get more vocal following one creepy incident that happened yesterday with a Google Nest Hub and a Xiaomi Mijia smart security cam.
A Redditor with the screenname /u/Dio-V who owns a Google Nest Hub and a number of Xiaomi cameras around their home asked the Google Assistant to display one of their cameras’ feeds. Instead of seeing a feed from their own cameras, they got stills that were seemingly from other people’s homes, including that of a baby sleeping and an old man sleeping in a chair. Further contributing to this creepiness is the fact that all stills were distorted and black and white as if we were watching a horror film. Given it’s a real issue and assuming that these are indeed live images from other people’s homes, this potentially represents a major security vulnerability. It could mean that your own home’s feed could have shown up on a random person’s smart display anywhere else around the world.
Credits: /u/Dio-V posting on /r/Xiaomi
In order to stop this from happening and to investigate it better, Google has temporarily killed Google Assistant integration for Mi Home smart home products, including light bulbs, cameras, and more. We tried to connect to a Xiaomi smart lamp through both a Google Home Mini and the Google Home app and we were unsuccessful for both, suggesting that the integration has been killed effective immediately. A Google spokesperson stated to Android Authority that they were “aware of the issue and are in contact with Xiaomi to work on a fix. In the meantime, we’re disabling Xiaomi integrations on our devices.”
Trying to control a Xiaomi smart lamp gives you an error in the Google Home app.
We will update this article if Xiaomi issues a response or if this issue is resolved.
Via: Android Authority