The collective power of this army of smart devices is used to mount large scale attacks on companies, websites and servers. Online botnetsīotnets are an army of slave devices that have been hacked for nefarious purposes. Laptops, smartphones, TVs they are all at risk if a vulnerable doorbell gives a hacker access to you home network. Think of the amount of connected devices there are in your home and the kind of personal data on them. Just like the doorbell is attached to the door of your home, a hacked smart doorbell can be a doorway to your entire network. They will also have access to your recordings and potentially when the house was empty. Having your doorbell ring at all hours of the night may just be an annoyance for some, but for elderly or vulnerable people this could be terrifying. You'll probably never know, but the risks to your privacy and security are serious. This is more mischievous than dangerous, but those same hackers could install malware on the doorbell that would give them unbridled access to your home network, and potentially other devices on it. Hackers could ring the doorbell at all hours of the night and change the volume. There's also the risk of a full device takeover. This is as dicey as it sounds, a hacker would assume full control of your doorbell. If it's sending data unencryted then things like your device password, and even your wi-fi password could be visible to hackers who intercept the data.

Encrypted data means it's all been scrambled, so anyone managing to intercept it on its journey might as well be looking at Sanskrit: it will make no sense. This is normal, but we expect this data to be encrypted. Smart devices use their internet connection to send packets of data from the device to centres, some of which are on the other side of the world. Don't wait for a reminder, change the username and password yourself. Worse still, not all of them press you to change your password. We've found doorbells with weak default passwords, such as '123456' or '000000' that will take a hacker using advanced password spamming software seconds to break. The easier your password is to break, the easier it will be for a hacker to gain access to your device and network.

As with most internet-connected devices a strong password is vital.

Feed and grow hacked