The U.S. Federal Trade Commission has filed a lawsuit against Taiwanese manufacturer D-Link Corp. accusing the company of selling unsecure wireless routers and security cameras. FTC complained that D-link provided routers and internet- linked cameras are easily hackable and disturbs the privacy of customer’s data.
FTC has courted D-Link in order to brief tele-giants for taking responsible steps to protect internet linked devices such as webcams, video recorders from hacking. D-Link did let out a statement in defense stating,
D-Link denies the allegations outlined in the complaint and is taking steps to defend the action, the security of our products and protection of our customers private data is always our top priority.
The complaint filed by FTC claims that D-link is unable to protect the devices from ‘widely known and reasonably foreseeable risks of unauthorized accesses’ as mentioned in the records. Further, U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California has ordered D-Link to improvise its security practices along with paying the agency’s legal costs as asked by the commission.
The lawsuit has been voted 2-1 by FTC commissioners with a yes from Democratic chairwoman Edith Ramirez and Commissioner Terrell McSweeny and denial from lone Republican commissioner, Maureen Ohlhausen. Previously in 2015, the agency rolled out guidelines on securing IoT devices which is acting as a base for the lawsuit.
Allison Nixon, Director of security research with cyber intelligence firm Flashpoint, commented on the case as under:
I think vendors are going to take it seriously; The IoT world needs to shape up quickly because this is a big problem.
Further, FTC also complained that one of the D-Link’s ads broadcasted of the product being secure, which now seems deceptive. The flaws in the complaint include guessable login credentials embedded in the camera software, vulnerabilities in the product software, command injection flaws etc. Earlier in February 2015, the FTC had targeted ASUS over similar problems found with its routers and cloud computing service.
