Yes, you’ve have read it right! What if a cyber attack takes place on your burglar alarm which has been protecting your home from intruders? What if the thieves disable it and then invade your home..?
Hard to imagine ….isn’t it? But this could possibly happen in near future.
Recently, Cybersecurity Insiders have learned that criminals can now switch off burglar alarms systems at the touch of a button using an electronic device available on Amazon for just £89. And thieves using these devices can deactivate wireless burglar alarms within seconds by jamming the signal from the sensors around the home that would otherwise trigger a siren, allowing them to gain entry in a discrete manner.
Gadgets like YARD Stick One, which is a USB stick with an antenna, can help criminals to jam the burglar alarm devices when connected to the computer. The criminal using such device can just plug the device to a laptop and play with it.
And despite a ban on these devices in Britain and US, still, Amazon is allowing companies to market their devices on its online store with a next-day delivery assurance.
Daily Mail on Sunday released a briefing on this issue in which it confirmed that the devices such the Yard Stick One does work in reality and requested Amazon to remove such illegal products from its platform.
Last week, the UK’s news resource purchased a Yard Stick One from Amazon and a burglar alarm from Maplin and tested the potential of the hacking device on the alarm. And to the surprise of Daily Mail, the device successfully hacked the alarm in a single attempt and that too in 30 second period with the help of a computer coded script freely available online.
Daily Mail soon posted the results and the gist of what it discovered and also passed on the information to the law enforcement.
The City of London Police confirmed that the sale of such alarm attack devices is illegal under Wireless Telegraphy Act and said that it has already warned the manufacturer/s against producing such goods.
However, the police department doesn’t have the right to stop the sale of such devices through online stores which are hosted from other nations.
So, does this literally mean the law enforcement in London is helpless on this issue?
Well, may be to a certain extent says Ken Munro, the founder of Pen Test Partners, which carried out cyber security testing. He said that hacking of burglar alarms is not confined to a particular brand as many wireless burglar alarms work in the same way i.e via radio signals.
And according to Ken manufacturers should upgrade their device security in such a way that things such as these don’t happen. Moreover, he added that consumers should look for systems which have 2-way systems like the ones which can detect jamming attacks.
