Amazon Plans Wall-Mounted Echo as Smart Home Command Center

Amazon is developing a new Echo device with a large touchscreen that attaches to the wall and serves as a smart home control panel, video chat device and media player, Bloomberg reports, citing people familiar with the plans. From a report: The company’s Lab126 hardware division is designing the device to be a digital command center, showing users upcoming calendar events,…

Mozilla’s Annual Buyer’s Guide Rates Amazon and Google Security Cameras ‘Very Creepy’

“Be Smart. Shop Safe,” warns Mozilla’s annual buyer’s guide for secure connected products. Based on their conversations with developers and dozens of privacy experts, they’ve awarded smiley faces with different expressions to rate products from “Not Creepy” up to “Super Creepy”. “While the variety of smart devices on offer is rapidly increasing, so are the number of products that pay no…

Security Researchers Exploit Amazon Echo’s Chromium Bug, Win $60,000 Bounty

An anonymous reader quotes TechCrunch: Two security researchers have been crowned the top hackers in this year’s Pwn2Own hacking contest after developing and testing several high profile exploits, including an attack against an Amazon Echo. Amat Cama and Richard Zhu, who make up Team Fluoroacetate, scored $60,000 in bug bounties for their integer overflow exploit against the latest Amazon Echo Show…

Facebook Portal Sales Are ‘Very Low’

Facebook’s Portal video-chat device — which puts a camera and a sensitive microphone in your living room — isn’t flying off the shelves, Fast Company reported Friday, citing supply-chain sources and store sales reps. From the report: The device, which launched a little over a year ago, has been plagued by the privacy concerns of would-be buyers from the start. And…