(SAN FRANCISCO, CA | TUESDAY, JUNE 6, 2023) -- Today, Mozilla is publicizing a security vulnerability in Amazon’s Ring Wireless Video Doorbell. Mozilla shared the vulnerability with Amazon over 90 days ago, but Amazon has yet to address the issue. Now, per industry standards, Mozilla is sharing its findings publicly to alert Ring Doorbell users and to further pressure Amazon to take action.
Following a penetration test of the Ring Doorbell conducted in October-November 2022, Mozilla and collaborator Cure53 determined that the device is vulnerable to Wi-Fi deauthentication attacks. Bad actors can leverage these weaknesses to disconnect the device from the internet using easily-accessible tools.
As a result, those bad actors could take the doorbell offline and then have their activities go unrecorded — undermining the product’s core purpose. Even after the doorbell is reconnected to the internet, a user will receive no alert about the attack.
Mozilla’s disclosure comes just days after Ring’s $5.8 million settlement with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) over other serious privacy and security issues. The FTC found that “Ring’s poor privacy and lax security let employees spy on customers through their cameras, including those in their bedrooms or bathrooms, and made customers' videos, including videos of kids, vulnerable to online attackers.”
Not everyone has that luxury, even those who are technically capable of removing it.
I don’t want to get into an Apple/Google / Know-Your-Product debate, but how do you know you removed all the Google Crap?
You only way of knowing what is on your phone is if you start from scratch with something like Ubuntu Touch and compile from source; even then, how do you know the manufacturer doesn’t have an embedded “phone home” chip?
At some point you have to decide whether to avoid Crapware completely or go with just the crapware from someone you can trust.