Google Inc. has blocked the integration of its services Nest Hub and Assistant with Xiaomi devices following the report of a Reddit user that they can see home images of random Mijia users from their Xiaomi Mijia 1080p Smart IP security camera.
In a post on Reddit, the owner shared a brief video of his Xiaomi Mijia 1080p Smart IP security camera to demonstrate the issue. As can be seen in the video, the man attempted to stream the camera footage, which displayed a random collection of images that are seemed to be taken from other people’s video feeds. These include a picture of a man sitting on a couch, a staircase, and even a sleeping baby in a child’s nursery.
“Xiaomi has always prioritized our users’ privacy and information security. We are aware there was an issue of receiving stills while connecting Mi Home Security Camera Basic 1080p on Google Home hub. We apologize for the inconvenience this has caused to our users,” the mobile manufacturer explained.
“Our team has since acted immediately to solve the issue and it is now fixed. Upon investigation, we have found out the issue was caused by a cache update on December 26, 2019, which was designed to improve camera streaming quality. This has only happened in extremely rare conditions. In this case, it happened during the integration between Mi Home Security Camera Basic 1080p and the Google Home Hub with a display screen under poor network conditions,” it added.
According to Xiaomi, a total of 1,044 users have their Xiaomi devices integrated with Google Home Hub, with a few at risk of being affected by the cache update due to “extremely poor network conditions.” The firm also claimed that such an issue will not happen if the camera is connected to Xiaomi’s Mi Home app.
“Xiaomi has communicated and fixed this issue with Google, and has also suspended this service until the root cause has been completely solved, to ensure that such issues will not happen again,” the company assured.
Google also responded with the issue, saying they are already aware of the concern and is currently in contact with Xiaomi to work on the problem. “In the meantime, we’re disabling Xiaomi integrations on our devices,” the tech giant revealed.
