How the 'smart home' could allow your house to spy on you and be manipulated by hackers

It's the stuff of horror films: an intruder in your house, impossible to find but undeniably somewhere, watching you at your most private moments. Or perhaps it's the plot of a thriller, where you are recruited into international crime without even knowing it, at the behest of smart criminals. If the worst fears about the prevalence of weakly secured smart home gadgets materialise, those terrifying situations could become all too real. As we fill our homes with internet-enabled and smart devices, we are opening ourselves up to attacks that exploit houses themselves – and we might not even realise they are happening. Everything from washing machines to baby monitors is being hooked up to the internet by companies convinced that features such as remote control and artificial intelligence will make our lives easier and safer.