Your home vacuum robots, refrigerators, routers… these seemingly harmless smart devices can actually become "backdoors" for hackers to steal your crypto assets.

Sounds like science fiction? But the data tells the story. There are currently 18.8 billion IoT devices online worldwide, with approximately 820,000 IoT-related attacks occurring daily. By 2023, the average American household will own 21 connected devices — and one-third of consumers have experienced data breaches or scams in the past year.

The key issue is that these devices have almost no security protections. Once hackers attack entry points like routers, they can move laterally to your computers, smartphones, and even expose your exchange login credentials. Tao Pan, a researcher at blockchain security firm Beosin, points out: "Unsecured IoT devices could become the breach point for the entire home network."

Even more dangerous — once compromised, attackers can capture all your communication data with exchanges. What does this mean for users conducting crypto transactions via API? Your API keys, private keys, and seed phrases could all be recorded. Your cryptocurrencies and bank accounts are now at the hacker’s fingertips.

So what should you do now? At the very least, change your network device passwords to strong ones and regularly update firmware. After all, when it comes to security, you really can't rely solely on the manufacturers.