The American security company Proofpoint has revealed that behind the latest major round of spam e-mail, those responsible are none other than... our refrigerators!
According to the company, hackers managed to turn various networked home appliances into spambots, exploiting various weaknesses in their – essentially non-existent – security systems. This resulted in the “smart” refrigerators becoming part of the spammers’ network, sending more than 750,000 e-mails to unsuspecting recipients.
This particular event was the first of its kind and rings the alarm bells for manufacturers of “smart” devices everywhere, who should take serious measures in programming the operating systems they integrate into their products. Imagine that we, as users, are not only at risk of unwittingly turning our home into a spam-bot, but also of any interception of sensitive data, such as our passwords for the various accounts we have in various services (Google, YouTube, for example).
