A home automation security hole let one writer remotely take over someone else's house. Hack yourself a haunted house, friends of Infocult:
Their systems had been made crawl-able by search engines... and due to Insteon not requiring user names and passwords by default in a now-discontinued product, I was able to click on the links, giving me the ability to turn these people’s homes into haunted houses, energy-consumption nightmares, or even robbery targets.
It gets better:
Thomas Hatley’s home was one of eight that I was able to access. Sensitive information was revealed – not just what appliances and devices people had, but their time zone (along with the closest major city to their home), IP addresses and even the name of a child; apparently, the parents wanted the ability to pull the plug on his television from afar. In at least three cases, there was enough information to link the homes on the Internet to their locations in the real world.
The hackable toilet bit is a fun one.
(thanks to Jason K for the link; Buster Keaton gif from Tumblr)
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