This Week in Getting Hacked: Winter Is Coming Edition

Welcome back to ‘This Week in Getting Hacked’—the world’s greatest cybersecurity-related link dump! Each week, we bring you the best news stories from the cybersecurity field, letting you know who’s getting hacked, who’s hacking, what data is leaking, and about what you should take with caution. So strap in, change your password, and let’s find out who’s getting hacked this week!
On to the links…
Winter has come for HBO who was the target of a recent cyberattack that resulted in leaks of full future-episodes of ‘Ballers’ and ‘Room 104’, as well as written material from next week’s ‘Game of Thrones’.

HBO hasn’t let on whether any customer data was compromised, but more importantly they also haven’t denied whether the Clegane Bowl will be happening, so we can all assume that it will and you should get hyped accordingly.
Who would’ve thought that a device that is built to listen to you could be hacked to LISTEN TO YOU FOR EVIL? Well, security researcher Mark Barnes did when he took a few minutes alone with an Amazon Echo and promptly turned it into a wiretap with a bit of malware. Granted, someone would have to physically break into your house, physically break open your Amazon Echo, physically solder chips onto your Echo to actually make this work, but the issue is that there is a vulnerability in these devices that can be exploited if people so choose. By all means, keep talking to your Amazon Echo, but don’t tell it too much.
Speaking of Internet of Things connected devices, Congress has introduced the “Internet of Things Cybersecurity Improvement Act” which would force device manufacturers to ramp up the security of their products.

With security of IoT devices hovering around “literal open door” and more products being adopted by consumers and the government, it’s good to see that people are finally taking a stand on whether or not a baby toy should be able to steal your data.
The Internet of Things is still incredibly un-secure, now to the tune of 120,000 IoT-connected security cameras being vulnerable RIGHT NOW.
A polling machine was sold on eBay and contained the personal information of over 650,000 voters. Woohoo!

–Continuing with the theme of election hacking, the DEF CON security conference was held in Las Vegas and featured a “Voting Machine Village”, where attendees were welcome to see how quickly they could hack into the voting machines used by counties and states all over the US. How quickly were they able to do it, you ask? Let’s take a look:
“It took me only a few minutes to see how to hack it,” said security consultant Thomas Richards, glancing at a Premier Election Solutions machine currently in use in Georgia.
That’s it for this week. Stay safe out there and change your passwords!