FTC has issued a lawsuit against D-Link over unsecured products.
The Taiwanese D-Link corporation is mostly known for producing several routers and cameras. New documents reveal that the United States’ Federal Trade Commission has filed a lawsuit against the D-Link Systems, the company’s US subsidiary. The suit concerns the fact that the company did not properly secure their products.
The FTC issued a public complaint to a court on Thursday, claiming that D-Link did not take any reasonable measures to protect their routers as well as their internet connected cameras from largely known and reasonable-enough risks of unpermitted access. Furthermore, the lawsuit also mentions the fact that the company did not test the devices for any security flaws, or made any attempts to keep its security keys strictly confidential, nor did they attempt to secure login information on mobile devices.
The FTC complaint strongly suggests that D-Link lack of addressing security concern has left thousands of owners of either routers or cameras completely unprotected and thus vulnerable to any hacker attack. Such an attack on an unprotected device could easily lead to the compromise of personal information.
However, the complaint and the overall lawsuit does not contain any breach of the D-Link Systems device. This has led the company to contest the FTC’s claim in court, maintaining that while the FTC says people are at risk, it has failed to show any evidence of such a breach of their security.
A federal court will be the one to determine whether or not to adopt a no harm, no foul position. In most similar cases, such as the 2013 complaint against TRENDnet ofter unsecured cameras as well as the one in 2016 against ASUS over unsafe routers, the companies reached an agreement with the FTC.
The lawsuit against D-Link is a test on the power of the FTC, which worries about the safety of consumers. Even more so in the age of the Internet of Things (IoT) which has seen an increasing number of unsecured products connected on the same network as a computer with private information. The FTC is trying to fill the security gaps produced by the lack of any laws that require such devices to have a minimum of security.
What do you think about the FTC’s lawsuit against D-Link?
Image source: D-Link
