Stranger Hacks Into Baby Monitor and Screams ‘Wake up baby, Wake up’.

A couple in Cincinnati had their worst nightmare when they were woken up by a loud male voice screaming at their 10-month old baby through their baby monitor, according to a report by Fox19.

The stranger shouted, “Wake up baby. Wake up baby,” at their daughter Emma and then screamed “aaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhh” to wake her up.

The parents, Adam and Heather Schreck, were quite surprised when they heard voices from their daughter’s room and when the mother checked the video feed on her phoneshe saw the camera moving.

About the time I saw it moving, I also heard a voice again start screaming at my daughter. He was screaming, ‘Wake up baby. Wake up baby,’ and then just a long ‘aaaaahhhh’ screaming at her, I guess trying to wake her up.”

Adam ran into Emma’s room and then the camera turned at him,

Then it screamed at me. Some bad things, some obscenities. So I unplugged the camera,” said Adam.

Heathers was visibly upset and felt violated when she said,

What scares me even more is that if this person hadn’t been screaming at my daughter I would not have known that he was even looking at her. So I have no way of knowing if he’s done it before, how often, listened in on conversations between my husband and I in the house. (It’s) just a real sense of violation that someone just walked into our life and (we) didn’t even know it.”

They had installed the latest Foscam IP camera for baby monitoring. The company’s product was earlier in news as well for a ‘firmware vulnerability,’ which allows hackers to easily tap in and control the camera remotely. In August 2013, a hacker had allegedlyhacked an Internet-connected cam and made some abusive comment like, “Wake up you little slut” to a two-year old girl from Houston after reading her name from her bedroom wall.

However, this was followed by a security fix from the manufacturers and increased security prompting the users to change the default admin user name and password.

Foscam wireless cameras are not the only ones that are vulnerable to attacks. Sometimes back, Qualys security researchers proclaimed that at least two out of every 10 wireless IP cameras can be authenticated without requiring password.

Tech experts feel that wireless IP cameras can easily act as doorways for cyber hackers.

It’s not just that they want to get in and mess with your camera. More sophisticated hackers know they can use this as a launching off point to get into your network and potentially steal your ID or use your network to launch malicious attacks against someone else,” said Dave Hatter, a solutions expert for Infinity Partners security.

He advises frequent change of Wi-Fi password as well as the camera itself.

Tech Expert Larry Collett describes steps to keep your family safe from the cyber-attackers.

1. Put a difficult password on your wireless router.
2. Change the default settings of the router to something other than “admin” or “password”.
3. Check for updates for the router and any connected devices.
4. Periodically change your wifi password.
5. Limit the number of connected devices that connect to your router.