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"Smart" Dolls are Potential Privacy Nightmares

posted by CoolHand on Friday December 09 2016, @11:29AM   
from the creepy-big-brother dept.

charon writes:

The "My Friend Cayla" doll uses voice recognition to hear what a child says and connects to the internet to find suitable responses. The potential for surveillance worries EPIC enough for them to file a formal complaint to the US Federal Trade commission.

The makers of the i-Que and Cayla smart toys have been accused of subjecting children to "ongoing surveillance" and posing an "imminent and immediate threat" to their safety and security.

The accusations come via a formal complaint in the US by consumer groups.

They, along with several EU bodies, are calling for investigations into the manufacturers.

And if that's not good enough, it can also be hacked to say anything, including the naughty words which are supposed to be blocked.

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Original Submission

• Re:Naughty words are the least of my concern... (Score: 4, Informative) by zocalo on Friday December 09 2016, @12:21PM

  by zocalo (302) on Friday December 09 2016, @12:21PM (#439118)

  It helps if you realise that the Mirror is not only a tabloid, but one aimed at the less educated end of the UK tabloid market. They're going to latch onto the things appropriate for their audience and skip over the big words and details - I read once that they - and others in this market segment - are apparently aimed at the reading proficiency and comprehension levels of an 8-year old.
  
  I saw actually Ken Munro of Pen Test Partners perform the live demo hack of the Kayla doll that the Mirror article is referring to (amongst several other devices), and naughty words is just the start of it - you can lead the responses to encourage the child into conversations with the doll on entire taboo subjects. "Mummy, what's a lesbian?" is probably not something most parents would want their pre-school snowflake trotting out, and that was just what Ken thought he could get away with in front of a live audience at a trade show. Worse still, it was possible to extract the WiFi password from the device, at which point any prospective child abductor could potentially leverage that to gain access to other smart devices in the house; and he demoed hacks on several of them; the almost obligatory kettle and fridge, but also cameras, and - most scary of all - a "smart" doorbell/lock, although in that example the vendor had worked with Pen Test, fixed the problem, and pushed an update out extremely quickly.

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  UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!

  Parent

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