Notice the company is Nest..... of Google

http://blogs.marketwatch.com/thetell/2014/08/11/second-hand-google-nest-thermostats-are-vulnerable-to-hacking/

Nest Labs

Google’s GOOGL -0.94% Nest thermostats may be too pricey for many consumers, but buying one second hand to save a little money might not be such a bright idea.

Hackers at the Black Hat security conference in Las Vegas showed how a Nest thermostat, which is used to control a home’s temperature or lighting, could be reconfigured to take control of them, according to a report in Venture Beat.

At the conference, Daniel Buentello, a student researcher at the University of Central Florida, said hackers eventually could corrupt other Nest devices in a bigger network, the report said.

In the demo, Buentello showed how one can plug a universal serial bus into a Nest device to put it in developer mode which would then allow hackers to upload their own programs.

Now, the hack can be carried out if a would-be intruder gets hold of an actual Nest device. Which is why the main threat comes from devices purchased second-hand.

A Google spokeswoman stressed this point, saying, “All hardware devices – from laptops to smartphones – are susceptible to jail-breaking, this is not a unique problem.

“This is a physical jailbreak requiring physical access to the Nest Learning Thermostat,” she told MarketWatch.

The hacking demonstrated at the conference, she added, “doesn’t compromise the security of our servers or the connections to them, and to the best of our knowledge, no devices have been accessed and compromised remotely.”

- Ben Pimentel

Follow Ben on Twitter @benpimentel