25 Things You Didn’t Know Could Be Hacked
Your smartphone and laptop are obvious targets for cybercriminals. But the digital threat landscape has expanded far beyond personal devices — and most people have no idea how many everyday objects are quietly vulnerable to attack.
With over 75 billion IoT devices projected to be connected worldwide by 2025, hackers now have an almost incomprehensible number of entry points into our lives. Your car, your child’s toy, the insulin pump keeping someone alive — all of them carry real cybersecurity risks that most people never think about. The average data breach now costs companies $4.45 million according to IBM’s 2023 Cost of a Data Breach Report, but the damage from some of these hacks goes well beyond financial loss.
This list of 25 things you didn’t know could be hacked covers everything from your home’s smart bulbs to national power grids, organized by category so you can see just how deeply digital vulnerability has worked its way into modern life.
Smart Home & Everyday Objects
1. Smart TVs
Your television is watching you back. Modern smart TVs come equipped with cameras, microphones, and internet connectivity — making them a surprisingly attractive target. Hackers can activate the built-in mic or camera to eavesdrop on conversations and record video without any visible indicator light switching on. Beyond surveillance, smart TVs can be recruited into botnets or used as a network entry point to reach other devices in your home.
2. Smart Thermostats
A thermostat might seem like a low-stakes device, but a compromised Nest or Ecobee reveals far more than the temperature you prefer. Hackers can monitor occupancy patterns to determine when your home is empty — useful information for physical break-ins. More technically, smart thermostats often serve as poorly secured bridges to the rest of your home network.
3. Baby Monitors
Few hacks feel as violating as this one. Baby monitors have been compromised repeatedly over the years, with hackers gaining live audio and video feeds of nurseries and, in disturbing cases, speaking directly to children through the device’s speaker. In 2020, a family reported that an intruder hacked a Ring camera positioned in a child’s room and spoke through it. Most budget baby monitors transmit data with weak or no encryption, making interception relatively straightforward.
4. Smart Cameras and Video Doorbells
Ring doorbells and Nest cameras are designed to enhance your home security — but a hacker who gains access effectively inherits your entire surveillance system. They can watch your comings and goings, disable recording during a break-in, or harvest weeks of footage showing daily routines, visitors, and even access codes entered on visible keypads.
5. Voice-Activated Speakers and Assistants
Amazon Echo, Google Home, and similar devices are always listening for a wake word. That persistent listening state makes them a compelling target. Researchers have demonstrated that ultrasonic commands — completely inaudible to humans — can trigger these devices to place calls, unlock smart locks, or make purchases. A compromised voice assistant can essentially become a live microphone inside your home.
6. Smart Locks
The convenience of keyless entry comes with a significant trade-off. Many smart locks communicate via Bluetooth or Wi-Fi using protocols that researchers have found to contain exploitable weaknesses. A successful hack can grant physical access to your home without leaving any sign of forced entry, making it nearly impossible to detect that a breach occurred at all.
7. Smart Light Bulbs
This one surprises almost everyone. Smart bulbs from brands like Philips Hue communicate using Zigbee, a wireless protocol that has known vulnerabilities. In 2020, researchers at Check Point demonstrated that a hacked smart bulb could be used to push malicious firmware updates that ultimately spread malware through an entire corporate network. A single light bulb became a doorway into the organization.
8. Printers and Multifunction Devices
Office printers are one of the most chronically ignored endpoints in corporate cybersecurity. Every document you print, copy, or scan can be intercepted. Worse, printers with outdated firmware and default admin credentials have been used as persistent entry points into otherwise well-defended networks. Threat actors can store malicious code in a printer’s flash memory that survives even factory resets.
Transportation and Mobility
9. Modern Connected Cars
In 2015, security researchers Charlie Miller and Chris Valasek remotely took control of a Jeep Cherokee while it was traveling at highway speed — adjusting the climate controls, blasting music, and then cutting the transmission and killing the brakes. The demonstration forced a recall of 1.4 million Fiat Chrysler vehicles. Today’s cars run on dozens of interconnected electronic control units, and the expanding presence of cellular connectivity makes remote access attacks a real and ongoing concern.
10. Drones
Commercial drones are essentially flying computers, and they inherit all of a computer’s vulnerabilities. Researchers have demonstrated GPS spoofing attacks that feed a drone false location data, effectively hijacking its navigation. Signal jamming can cut communication between drone and operator, forcing the device into unpredictable autonomous behavior. As drone delivery expands commercially, the attack surface for these kinds of exploits grows considerably.
11. Electric Vehicle Charging Stations
EV charging stations represent a largely underappreciated vulnerability. They sit at the intersection of the power grid, payment systems, and vehicle software. Researchers have demonstrated that compromised chargers can inject malicious code directly into a connected vehicle’s onboard systems, steal payment data, or be used to destabilize local power grid sections. As EV infrastructure scales rapidly, security investment has not always kept pace.
12. Traffic Lights and Smart Streetlights
In 2014, University of Michigan researchers hacked into a network of 100 wirelessly connected traffic lights using a standard laptop. The systems used unencrypted communications and default credentials. Manipulating traffic signals can create dangerous intersections, redirect emergency vehicles, or be used to stage targeted accidents. Smart streetlights add energy usage data and surveillance capabilities to the risk profile.
13. E-Scooters and Rental Bikes
Shared mobility devices are managed through apps and internet-connected lock systems, and several platforms have had vulnerabilities exposing user location histories and personal data. More alarmingly, some researchers have demonstrated the ability to remotely lock or unlock rental vehicles, enabling unauthorized use or denying legitimate users access.
Medical and Health Devices
14. Pacemakers and Implantable Defibrillators
This is the hack that makes the stakes undeniably clear. The FDA has issued multiple cybersecurity advisories regarding implantable cardiac devices, confirming that certain models could be manipulated wirelessly by an attacker within range. A compromised pacemaker could theoretically be instructed to deliver inappropriate shocks or withhold them entirely. Security researcher Billy Rios demonstrated these vulnerabilities in real devices, prompting manufacturers to issue urgent firmware patches.
15. Insulin Pumps
In 2019, the FDA issued a safety communication specifically warning that certain Medtronic MiniMed insulin pumps contained a cybersecurity vulnerability allowing unauthorized individuals to connect wirelessly and change dosage settings. An attacker with malicious intent could deliver too much or too little insulin — with potentially fatal consequences. Johnson & Johnson issued a similar warning for one of its insulin pump models in 2017. These aren’t theoretical scenarios; they’re documented vulnerabilities in commercially available devices.
16. Hospital Equipment
MRI machines, X-ray systems, and IV infusion pumps in hospitals frequently run legacy operating systems that haven’t received a security update in years. During the 2017 WannaCry ransomware attack, thousands of NHS hospital devices in the UK were incapacitated, forcing cancellation of approximately 19,000 appointments and causing estimated damages of £92 million. When hospital equipment goes down or feeds falsified data, patient care is directly compromised.
17. Wearable Health Trackers
Your Fitbit or Apple Watch collects a detailed record of your heart rate, sleep patterns, physical activity, and GPS location. That data is enormously valuable — to insurance companies, to advertisers, and to anyone who wants to track your movements or build a profile on your daily life. Interception of Bluetooth communications between wearables and paired phones has been demonstrated by multiple security researchers.
Industrial and Infrastructure Targets
18. Industrial Control Systems (SCADA and PLCs)
Stuxnet, discovered in 2010, was the world’s first widely acknowledged cyberweapon. It targeted Siemens programmable logic controllers managing Iranian nuclear centrifuges and physically destroyed approximately 1,000 of them — all without a single soldier crossing a border. Industrial control systems managing power plants, water treatment facilities, and oil pipelines remain high-value targets. The 2021 Colonial Pipeline ransomware attack shut down fuel supplies across the US East Coast and triggered emergency declarations in multiple states.
19. Smart Meters
Smart electricity meters transmit consumption data wirelessly back to utility companies — and those transmissions can be intercepted. Researchers have demonstrated the ability to manipulate meter readings to steal energy, identify when a home is occupied based on appliance usage patterns, and in some cases pivot through smart meter networks toward the broader grid infrastructure. With hundreds of millions deployed globally, the collective attack surface is enormous.
20. Digital Billboards and Public Signage
Digital billboards and electronic information displays in airports, train stations, and shopping centers have been hacked to display unauthorized content, including malicious software prompts targeting public Wi-Fi users nearby. In 2022, several digital billboards in Russia were hacked during the conflict with Ukraine to display antiwar messages — demonstrating just how accessible these systems can be to a determined attacker.
21. ATMs and Point-of-Sale Systems
ATM hacking has evolved from physical card skimmers to sophisticated software attacks called “jackpotting,” where malware forces the machine to dispense all available cash. Point-of-sale terminals — the card readers at checkout counters — have been systematically compromised in some of retail history’s largest breaches. The 2013 Target breach, which exposed 40 million payment card numbers, originated through POS malware installed by attackers who initially accessed the network through an HVAC contractor.
22. Industrial Robots
Advanced manufacturing robots connected to corporate networks can be hijacked by attackers to introduce subtle defects into products, cause workplace accidents, or hold production lines hostage with ransomware. Researchers at Trend Micro and Politecnico di Milano demonstrated in 2017 that they could remotely alter the movements of an industrial robotic arm with enough precision to introduce microscopic flaws into manufactured components — flaws that would pass visual inspection but fail under stress.
Less Obvious and Emerging Targets
23. 3D Printers
3D printers hold intellectual property in the form of design files, and those files can be stolen directly from compromised machines or the networks they’re connected to. But the risks extend into the physical world: researchers have demonstrated that manipulated firmware can introduce invisible structural weaknesses into printed objects. A drone part, a medical prosthetic, or a safety component printed on a compromised machine might look perfect but fail catastrophically under load.
24. Smart Toys
Internet-connected toys designed for children have proven to be some of the most poorly secured devices on the consumer market. The CloudPets breach in 2017 exposed over 800,000 user accounts and 2 million voice recordings of parents and children — all stored in an unsecured database. Interactive toys that listen for voice commands or connect to companion apps create direct channels for eavesdropping, data harvesting, and in some cases, real-time communication with children by anyone who gains access.
25. Smart Agricultural Equipment
Modern industrial farms use GPS-guided tractors, networked soil sensors, and automated irrigation systems — and all of it is hackable. Researchers have flagged that compromising agricultural control systems could allow attackers to disrupt planting or harvesting schedules, manipulate soil treatment data, or hold entire farming operations hostage with ransomware. With global food supply chains already under pressure, targeted agricultural cyberattacks represent a serious emerging threat that receives far less attention than it deserves.
How to Protect Yourself in an Interconnected World
The breadth of this list can feel overwhelming, but a few consistent practices dramatically reduce your exposure across almost every category:
– Change default passwords immediately on every connected device you bring into your home or workplace. Default credentials are published online and are the first thing attackers try.
– Keep firmware and software updated — manufacturers release patches specifically to address discovered vulnerabilities, and ignoring updates leaves known holes open.
– Segment your network by putting IoT devices on a separate guest network, isolating them from computers and phones that hold sensitive data.
– Research before you buy — check whether a manufacturer has a published security policy and a history of responding to reported vulnerabilities.
– Disable features you don’t use, particularly cameras, microphones, and remote access capabilities on devices that don’t need them.
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Frequently Asked Questions
Are smart home devices really a serious security risk for ordinary people?
Yes. Many smart home devices ship with weak default credentials, unencrypted communications, and infrequent firmware updates. While large-scale targeted attacks tend to focus on corporate and infrastructure targets, individual devices like baby monitors and smart cameras have been exploited in numerous documented cases that affected ordinary households.
Can a hacker really take over a car remotely?
Demonstrated real-world research confirms it’s possible. The 2015 Jeep Cherokee hack showed that connected vehicles with cellular interfaces can be accessed remotely. The automotive industry has invested significantly in response, but the risk hasn’t disappeared — it’s evolving alongside vehicle technology.
How do hackers get into medical devices like pacemakers?
Most vulnerable medical devices use short-range wireless protocols (like Bluetooth or proprietary radio frequencies) that lack robust authentication. An attacker typically needs to be within a limited physical range to exploit these vulnerabilities, which reduces — but doesn’t eliminate — the practical risk.
What is a botnet, and why do hackers recruit household devices into them?
A botnet is a network of compromised devices controlled by an attacker and used to carry out large-scale attacks like sending spam, conducting DDoS attacks, or mining cryptocurrency. Household devices are attractive recruits because they’re numerous, always on, and rarely monitored for suspicious activity.
Why are industrial control systems still vulnerable decades after Stuxnet?
Many industrial control systems were designed before cybersecurity was a primary concern, run legacy software that can’t be easily updated, and operate in sectors where downtime for patching carries enormous operational costs. The result is a persistent gap between known risks and the pace of remediation.
What’s the single most impactful thing I can do to protect my connected devices?
Change default passwords and enable automatic firmware updates on every internet-connected device you own. Most successful attacks against consumer IoT devices exploit weak credentials or unpatched vulnerabilities that manufacturers have already fixed — the patch just hasn’t been applied.
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The Takeaway
The 25 things on this list span your living room, your car, the hospital down the street, and the power grid keeping your city running. Cybersecurity is no longer a concern limited to IT departments and computer scientists — it’s woven into almost every piece of technology we interact with daily. The first step toward meaningful protection is simply knowing what’s at risk. Now you do.
Curious minds who want to keep exploring surprising facts about technology, security, and the modern world will find no shortage of rabbit holes to dive into — the connected world is full of them, and not all of them are safe.