A Couple’s Nest Smart Home Was Taken Over by Hackers, And Vulgar Music Was Involved

The Internet of Things (IoT) can be quite spooky too. The latest proof of that comes from the rather terrifying experience that a Milwaukee based couple Samantha and Lamont Westmoreland had to go through. A hacker took control of their Nest camera and started speaking to them through it. And it wasn’t a pleasant conversation, safe to say. Nest is a brand that makes smart home devices including security cameras and is owned by Google.

The couple, while speaking with Fox 6 News say that they have a Nest camera, a doorbell and a thermostat installed in their home since 2018 and this cost them $700. But what happened recently may have just changed their opinions about smart home devices. The couple returned home from work on September 17 only to find their home incredibly warm. Thinking it was a glitch with the Nest thermostat that controls the heating and cooling inside the home, the Westmoreland couple reset the thermostat to their preferred temperature and got on with life. But that was not it. Perhaps you may have seen this in movies, but the incident just kept repeating. The thermostat kept getting reset to incredibly warm temperatures. Eventually, a voice began speaking to them from the Nest camera installed in their home. And that wasn’t it—the hacker also started playing vulgar music.