Before journalist and mum Mary-Jane Aggett started making the documentary ‘Hacked’ she thought she had a pretty good handle on what hacking was all about – who was likely behind it and what means they would do it by. But, as she’s discovered the reality is quite terrifyingly different and it’s made her give ordinary home appliances a second look…
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Before making Hacked!, I thought I had a fairly reasonable handle on hackers.
They were shadowy people in hoodies, sitting in dark rooms surrounded by blinking computer screens, tapping away at lightning speed while trying to break into a bank. Or, at the slightly less dramatic end of the spectrum, they were the reason your friend suddenly started posting, “I can’t believe this actually works!” above a suspicious cryptocurrency link on Facebook.
Annoying? Absolutely. But also… a little bit distant.
Then I began working on Hacked!, a new documentary investigating cybercrime in Aotearoa, and discovered something that made me look at practically every object in my house differently.
The one thing I learnt? If an everyday device is connected to the internet, there’s a chance someone could hack it.
And I don’t just mean your laptop or your phone.
I mean your car. Your home security system. Your baby monitor. Your television. Even your vacuum cleaner.
Crikey.
Like most people, I’ve spent years happily inviting “smart” gadgets into my home without giving them a second thought. A smart TV? Lovely. A camera I can check while I’m away? So handy. A robot vacuum that tootles around cleaning the floor while I’m doing something else? Frankly, that little guy is practically family.
But every connected device is, in effect, another tiny door into your digital life. And while most of those doors are perfectly useful, some arrive with the cyber equivalent of a flimsy lock… and here’s the scary part… and many of us never bother changing the key.
We reuse the same password. We ignore the software-update notification for six months. We leave the default settings untouched because who has the time—or any idea what half of them mean?
Meanwhile, our homes are filling up with devices that collect information, connect to apps and, in some cases, have cameras or microphones attached.
Jeepers.
The car was the one that really got me. Modern vehicles are essentially computers on wheels. They can connect to phones, apps, navigation systems and online services. That connectivity can make driving safer and more convenient, but it also creates opportunities most of us have never dreamt of!
I’m not saying you need to eye your vacuum suspiciously as it disappears beneath the couch, or rip every smart appliance from the wall and return to living by candlelight. I’m certainly not giving up Google Maps (how else can we get out of the shopping-centre car park)
But I am saying we need to stop thinking cybercrime is something that only happens to big companies, tech experts or people who click extremely dubious emails from overseas princes.
It can happen to ordinary New Zealanders, in ordinary homes, through ordinary things.
And the people behind these attacks aren’t necessarily criminal masterminds personally targeting you from a secret underground lair. Often, they’re simply looking for an easy way in, and automated tools allow them to rattle thousands of digital door handles at once.
That was perhaps the most unsettling part: you don’t need to be rich, famous or particularly interesting. You may simply have an old password, an unpatched device or a security camera that was never properly set up.
The good news is that we don’t need to become cybersecurity experts overnight. A few decidedly unsexy habits make a genuine difference: use a different password for every important account, switch on multi-factor authentication, install updates when they appear and change the default password on anything connected to your Wi-Fi.
Yes, it’s boring. No one has ever gathered the family around on Christmas morning and announced, “Great news, everyone, I’ve enabled two-factor authentication!”
But after making Hacked!, I’ve realised our digital lives and our “real” lives are no longer separate. Our banking, memories, conversations, cars and homes are all connected and protecting them matters just as much as locking the front door.
So, the one thing I learnt is this: hacking isn’t just something that happens on Facebook.
It can happen through the things sitting in our pockets, parked in our driveways and quietly vacuuming the crumbs beneath the kitchen table.
Which is why I’m now giving my robot vacuum a much more suspicious side-eye.
Hacked airs Monday, 8.30pm on TVNZ 1 and TVNZ+ – as part of the Documentary New Zealand season.