A million baby monitors and security cameras were easily viewable by hackers

A striking development has emerged in artificial intelligence. Tech TechPosts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed. FollowSee All Tech News NewsPosts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed. FollowSee All News Report ReportPosts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed.

FollowSee All ReportA million baby monitors and security cameras were easily viewable by hackersMeari Technology: the Wi-Fi camera maker you’ve probably never heard of. by Sean Hollister Sean HollisterSenior EditorPosts from this author will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed. FollowSee All by Sean HollisterMay 11, 2026, 4:00 PM UTC If your baby monitor looks something like this, it’s probably a Meari.

Technical Details

| Image: Meari Sean Hollister Sean HollisterPosts from this author will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed. FollowSee All by Sean Hollister is a senior editor and founding member of The Verge who covers gadgets, games, and toys. He spent 15 years editing the likes of CNET, Gizmodo, and Engadget.

A baby’s eyes peer directly into the camera lens. A kid with a striped shirt looks up, then away. A boy in a policeman’s costume, a gold star on his chest.

A messy bedroom that reminds me of my own daughters, with an unmade bunk bed, a little girl’s hat and headband, and Hello Kitty plastered on the wall. One thought repeats in my mind: I shouldn’t be seeing this. But bad actors could’ve easily spied on all these locations — and a million more — because many of Meari Technology’s Wi-Fi baby monitors and security cameras were absurdly insecure.

Industry Implications

If you had access to one of those cameras, you theoretically had access to them all. RelatedA hacker ran me over with a robot lawn mowerThe DJI Romo robovac had security so poor, this man remotely accessed thousands of themMeari is a Chinese white-label brand whose cameras ship under hundreds of different names. Many are generic-sounding Amazon sellers like Arenti, Anran, Boifun, and ieGeek.

But financial records show one of the company’s biggest customers is Wyze; its biggest customer is Zhiyun; and many hackable cameras were from Intelbras. At least one of Petcube’s pet-monitoring cameras appears to be a Meari product as well. Sammy Azdoufal — the man from France who created a remote-controlled army of DJI Romo robot vacuum cleaners without really trying — tells The Verge he found 1.

1 million remotely accessible Meari cameras almost the same way. Just by inspecting the Android app, Azdoufal says he was able to extract a single key that gave him access to devices across 118 countries. Every one of those million devices was broadcasting its information to anyone who knew how to listen.

This advance offers important signals about the future of the sector, and the tech world is watching closely.