“Given Alexa’s ubiquity and ubiquity, Check Point researchers have begun to speculate that the AI assistant is an ‘entry point’ for hackers into a person’s home,” the cybersecurity company said in the report.
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More than two hundred million international devices have been delivered with Alexa, according to CNet.
In a situation described through Check Point, an Alexa user clicks on a malicious link and then the attacker gets a list of all the apps installed in the Alexa account. The attacker then deletes one or more of the apps and then installs an app with the same “calling word”, such as “get” or “search”, as the app deleted. Then, when the user tries to use the word again, it activates the app, giving the hacker the ability to make moves in Alexa.
Check Point said it reported the vulnerabilities to Amazon in June 2020 and that the technology resolved the issue.
“What we do know is that Alexa had a significant time during which she was vulnerable to hackers,” Check Point spokesman Ekram Ahmed told Fox News. “Until amazon’s update, it’simaginable that non-public and sensitive data was extracted through hackers through Alexa. Check Point doesn’t know if this ever happened or not, or to what extent it happened.”
Fox News contacted Amazon for a comment.
Check Point said it has conducted studies to highlight how critical the security of Alexa devices is to maintain user privacy.
“Smart speakers and virtual assistants aren’t so unusual that it’s simple to determine how much non-public knowledge they have and their role in controlling other smart devices in our homes,” Oded Vanunu, head of product vulnerability studies at Check Point, told Fox Oded Vanunu. News in a story.
Some precautions that users can take include installing unknown apps on their smart speaker and paying attention to the sensitive data you share with your smart speakers, such as passwords and bank account data, Check Point said.
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