[Services Resumed] Mi Home Security Camera bug allegedly exposes user data, issue yet to be acknowledged by Xiaomi

New updates are being added at the bottom of this story…….

Original story (published on January 2, 2020) follows:

Security is one of the biggest concerns of any living being. Thanks to the monumental boom in IoT, there are multiple big players that offer great security solutions, such as smart cameras, enhanced locking mechanisms etc.

Xiaomi is a well-known Chinese technology giant, and they are not limited to smartphone manufacturing. Via their ‘Mijia’ sub-brand, the OEM is also a recognized name when it comes to providing home security systems.

One of the latest inclusions in their inventory is the Mi Home Security Camera that sports features like full HD 1080p support, 130-degrees wide-angle view, infrared night vision, AI motion detection and more.

However, according to one owner of the Mi Home Security Camera, they are facing a very problematic issue. The redditor u/Dio-V has reported that the camera shows images of other people’s homes.

You can check out the user’s discussions screenshot on this issue below:

Not only this but the same user has also shared a number of stills that shows different people’s houses captured on the Google Home Hub:

Various sub-reddits are flocked with users discussing the extent of this alleged bug in the Mi security camera. You can check out some of the user comments on this issue below:

Looks like some kind of caching bug. Wonder is Google caching those stills or Xiaomi. It could well be a google bug.

(Source)

The only other unknown is we can’t say if its a problem with only Xiaomi own setup because of caching or worse yet; access to different customer buckets resulting in leaking these last cached frames. We also can’t say that the only ones leaking ARE Xiaomi and its sub-brands, I really hope its only isolated to Xiaomi (as horrible as a problem it is)

(Source)

and that’s the reason why i’m never gonna get smart home devices..

(Source)

There is no official acknowledgement from Xiaomi regarding this issue and we will have to wait before something concrete comes up. We will keep you in the loop once we have more information in this regard.

Update (January 3)

After this issue was being reported on several websites, one of the Google’s spokesperson has come out with a statement regarding this matter:

“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.”
(Source)

This means that, while both Google and Xiaomi are working for a permanent fix for this bug, all the Mi Home products integrations with the Google Assistant have been disabled.

Update (January 4)

Just after Google came up with their statement on this issue, finally Xiaomi has also commented on this security bug that has surfaced Mi Home security camera:

“Xiaomi has always prioritized our user’s 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.”
(Source)

It appears that a cache update is causing such issues which are now fixed. However, to ensure security, Xiaomi will keep the services suspended until the root cause is identified.

Update (January 6)

In a recent development, all the Mi Home products integrations with the Google Assistant which was disabled due to the security bug is now back online. 

Xiaomi has confirmed this piece of information stating:

“…devices other than the camera product are now available on Google Nest Hub.”

(Source)

However, the Mi security products with camera are still disabled until further investigation by Xiaomi and Google. Once the investigation regarding this bug is sorted, we can expect the services to be back to normal.

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