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VTech Hack Gets Worse: Chat Logs, Kids' Photos Taken In Breach (vice.com)
An anonymous reader writes: The VTech hack just got a little worse. Reports say that in addition to the 4.8 million records with parents' names, home addresses, passwords and the identities of 227k kids, the hackers also have hundreds of gigabytes worth of pictures and chat logs belonging to children. ZDNet reports: "Tens of thousands of pictures — many blank or duplicates — were thought to have been taken from from Kid Connect, an app that allows parents to use a smartphone app to talk to their children through a VTech tablet. Motherboard was able to verify a portion of the images, and the chat logs, which date as far back as late-2014. Details about the intrusion are not fully known yet. The hacker, who for now remains nameless, told Motherboard that the Hong Kong-based company 'left other sensitive data exposed on its servers.'"
People that exist, but neither you nor I would have any desire to meet.
I'm guessing that reactionary mommy bloggers everywhere are losing their minds about this non-story while every useful person on this planet continues with their lives.
The important question is why the data was stored on VTech's servers in the first place.
THIS ^^^^^^^^ THIS
This corporate culture of "store everything" needs to go away. At least in the past, we had storage limitations that made this infeasible. But dammit, as a software engineer, if the system requirements tell me to store something that would be bad if it was released, then I'm not storing it unless there is a damned good reason AND it is well encrypted.
My kids have some vtech stuff. I downloaded their app that lets the toy know the child's name, birthday, and favorite food. But that's it. It never occurred to me that they would have any reason to store that information. Let alone storing photos and chat logs from devices that have that capability.
WTF!!!!! I am anxious to hear about this. This is why I used to use a personal firewall years ago. Everything phones home. But now they are impractical.
"We have your son, Timmy. Here's a picture for proof. He says he really misses his dog Spot. If you want to see him alive again, wire $5000 to ..."