Disturbing footage released by a Tennessee family shows the moment a stranger accessed the security camera in their daughter's bedroom.
The chilling video shows eight-year-old Alyssa LeMay standing in the bedroom she shares with her two sisters.
From the Amazon Ring security camera in the corner, a man's voice can be heard.
"Hello there," the unknown man says. Not only could he speak to Alyssa - he could see her.
He taunted her with racial slurs.
"Go tell mommy you're a n******," he tells the girl before repeatedly shouting the slur.
He also encouraged destructive behaviour from the child.
"You can do whatever you want right now. You can mess up your room. You can break your TV. You can do whatever you want,"
When the child asks who he is, he replies "I'm your best friend. I'm Santa Claus. Don't you want to be my best friend?"
Alyssa's mother Ashley says the hack has left her family feeling vulnerable.
"I did the exact opposite of adding another security measure," she told The Washington Post on Thursday.
"I put them at risk and there's nothing I can do to really ease their mind. I can't tell them I know who it is. I can't tell them they're not going to show up at our house in the middle of the night."
The LeMay's unsettling encounter is the latest of a slew of videos which show the security cameras being hacked.
One woman was told to "wake up" by a disembodied voice coming from her Ring camera.
Another Texas family was told they must pay a Bitcoin ransom or "get terminated".
In Florida, a mixed-race couple was taunted about their biracial son. A Staten Island mother says she feels "violated and anxious" after her camera was hacked and her 13-year-old son was watched at home.
Ring says the hacks are not from a breach in its security. Instead, the hackers are using customer data leaked in previous breaches. Known as credit stuffing, hackers will trawl information leaked online and try various passwords through multiple platforms to see what works.
"We highly and openly encourage all Ring users to enable two-factor authentication…use strong passwords and regularly change their passwords," said a spokesperson for the company.
The spate of hacks are thought to have originated from a podcast called NulledCast.
Hacking forum Nulled popularized the hacks as entertainment, reports Vice.
A post to the forum encouraged people to listen in on the hacking.
"Join us as we go on completely random tangents such as; Ring & Nest Trolling, telling shelter owners we killed a kitten, Nulled drama, and more ridiculous topics."
Due to mainstream media coverage, the forum has deleted the majority of its references to Ring hacking - although it seems the podcast hosts intend to continue.
"Hey NulledCast fans," reads a post to the forum.
"We need to calm down on the ring trolling, we have 3 investigations and two of us are already probably f***ed….it will still happen just on a much smaller scale."
