Google Disables Xiaomi Integration After Nest Hub Picks Up Random Camera Feed

A user’s Google Nest Hub was showing images from a random camera feed instead of his own Xiaomi Mijia 1080p smart IP security camera.

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. — It has been an extremely troubling week for smart home cameras.

Several weeks ago, a wave of Ring security camera hackings were reported, followed by Ring and Amazon getting slapped with a federal lawsuit.

Not long after Christmas, Wyze discovered that one of its employees inadvertently leaked the information of millions of its customers.

The latest conundrum involves Xiaomi and its Mijia 1080p smart IP security camera, specifically its integration with Google’s Nest Hub.

Reddit user Dio-V posted to the Google Home subreddit that when he uses his Nest Hub to view his camera feed, it instead displays stills of someone else’s security camera.

Dio-V provides a video of the action as well as numerous screenshots of images the Nest Hub pulls up, including a man sleeping in a chair and a baby in a crib.

Though there is always the chance this is a hoax, as it hasn’t been independently verified, Google is taking the claim seriously and has disabled its integrations with Xiaomi.

Google provided Android Police with the following statement:

“We’re aware of the issue and are in contact with Xiaomi to work on a fix. In the meantime, we’re disabling Xiaomi integrations on our devices.”

Supposedly the issue has to do with a issue related to a cache update. A Xiaomi spokesperson told the Deccan Herald:

“Xiaomi has always prioritized our users’ privacy and information security. We are aware there was an issue of receiving stills while connecting Mi Home Security Camera Basic 1080p on Google Home hub. We apologize for the inconvenience this has caused to our users.

Our team has since acted immediately to solve the issue and it is now fixed. Upon investigation, we have found out the issue was caused by a cache update on December 26, 2019, which was designed to improve camera streaming quality. This has only happened in extremely rare conditions. In this case, it happened during the integration between Mi Home Security Camera Basic 1080p and the Google Home Hub with a display screen under poor network conditions.

We have also found 1044 users were with such integrations and only a few with extremely poor network conditions might be affected. This issue will not happen if the camera is linked to the Xiaomi’s Mi Home app.

Xiaomi has communicated and fixed this issue with Google, and has also suspended this service until the root cause has been completely solved, to ensure that such issues will not happen again.”

It looks like smart home cybersecurity is going to get off to a rocky start in 2020. Hopefully manufacturers will step up their efforts.

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Steven A. Karantzoulidis is the Web Editor for Security Sales & Integration. He graduated from the University of Massachusetts Amherst with a degree in Communication and has a background in Film, A/V and Social Media.

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