Taiwanese manufacturer D-Link calls the recently opened lawsuit against the company as ‘unwarranted and baseless’ alongside deciding to fight back in hand with Cause of Action Institute.
Last week, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission filed a case against D-link accusing the company of selling unprotected wireless routers and security cameras and hence intervening with user’s privacy. The commission mentioned D-link of not taking reasonable steps in regard to ‘widely known and reasonably foreseeable risks of unauthorized access.
Now, D-link has got support from Cause of Action Institute which will be defending the case against the FTC. The Cause of Action Institute is a non-profit organization that fights to protect economic opportunity when federal regulations, spending, and cronyism threaten it.
The organisation criticizes the FTC of filing a case with just a mere chance of a data security breach and does not hold any strong evidence against the Tele-giant. CAI has previously represented LabMD in its successful data security suit against the FTC back in 2015 similar to D-Link’s case.
Patrick Massarifor, Assistant VP for CAI, further stated in defense as,
It sets a dangerous precedent for the federal government to go after a good company and put American jobs at risk without a single instance of actual or likely consumer harm, this lawsuit is another instance of the FTC’s unchecked regulatory overreach … nearly every company will be subject to unconstrained and unexplored data security liability. Such limitless liability coupled with FTC’s history of unrelentingly litigious oversight will no doubt have a chilling effect on innovation in the Internet of Things.
The flaws in the complaint include guessable login credentials embedded in the camera software, vulnerabilities in the product software, command injection flaws etc. Further, the lawsuit stated that the hardware company ‘failing to protect against flaws which the Open Web Application Security Project has ranked among the most critical and widespread web application vulnerabilities since at least 2007’
In response to the complaint, D-Link’s officer William Brown said,
We are committed to protecting customer security, which the complaint affirmed by citing no actual data breach, Global connectivity relies on an unfettered commitment to security; we will continue to maintain and enhance the integrity of all D-Link Systems products.
The company is all set to provide evidence to assure secure customer data, thus presenting a strong case. But it is yet to witness how the case unfolds further and how much is D-Link guilty of.
