Reality is scarier than fiction -- especially when it comes to what hackers can do. In many bizarre-but-true ways, your home is wide open to hacker attacks. Right now.
While you're reading this, a criminal could be logging in to your router and using it as a porn server. He could be using a Bluetooth "sniper rifle" (like the one shown on the left) to tap into your phone while you chat by the window. He could even physically steal your printer and capture from its circuitry the financial records you printed last week.
Here are 10 scary -- and real -- home-security threats hackers may try, and how to block them -- if you can.
1. They Can Take a Gun to Your Phone Calls
A gun ... for wireless networking? It's weird, but it's true. A few years ago, John Hering -- who's now the CEO of Lookout -- built a data-sniping rifle that could hack its way into the Bluetooth networks used by most cellular phones. It caused quite a stir with security pundits. He showed how to sniff out a Bluetooth signal, tap into a phone and steal data -- from across the block or even from an airplane overhead.
A gun ... for wireless networking? It's weird, but it's true. A few years ago, John Hering -- who's now the CEO of Lookout -- built a data-sniping rifle that could hack its way into the Bluetooth networks used by most cellular phones. It caused quite a stir with security pundits. He showed how to sniff out a Bluetooth signal, tap into a phone and steal data -- from across the block or even from an airplane overhead.
4. They Can Intercept Your Display
Using a device called a Tempest receiver -- a gadget that costs $1,000 or more but is readily available online -- Schwartau says it's possible to capture the transmissions between your PC and monitor, then re-create those transmission on a second monitor. He's shown that this procedure works for many years, in fact. Hackers can then capture any information you view on a PC.
