The parents of an eight-year-old girl have shared chilling footage online that shows a hacker talking to her in her bedroom via a smart camera installed in the room.

The hacker can be heard telling the youngster: “It’s Santa. It’s your best friend.” The video comes amid increased warnings about the need to better secure connected smart devices.

In the footage, which was recorded at the family home in Mississippi, USA, the frightened girl shouts “who is that?” as the male voice tries to engage her in conversation.

The girl’s mother, Ashley LeMay, had installed the Ring security camera in order to monitor her children and feel more connected to them while she worked night shifts as a nurse.

LeMay said she researched the product extensively and it had been recommended to her by another mother. Although the camera comes with two-factor authentication, LeMay did not set up it up, and the manufacturer does not force its deployment.

In the clip, the girl is seen standing in the middle of her room as the song Tiptoe Through the Tulips plays before he begins speaking to her.

Breathing can be heard behind the camera before the male voice starts speaking to her. Visibly scared she calls for her mother before the voice tries to engage her again, saying: “I’m Santa Claus. Don’t you wanna be my best friend?”.

Upon reviewing the footage, LeMay’s partner disconnected the device. Speaking to WBC, LeMay said: “They could have watched them sleeping, changing. I mean they could have seen all kinds of things. Honestly, my gut makes me feel like it’s either somebody who knows us or somebody who is very close by.”

The family have now upped their security, including changing their WiFi settings so it is no longer visible.

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A spokeswoman for Ring said: “Customer trust is important to us and we take the security of our devices seriously.

“While we are still investigating this issue and are taking appropriate steps to protect our devices based on our investigation, we are able to confirm this incident is in no way related to a breach or compromise of Ring’s security.

“Due to the fact that customers often use the same username and password for their various accounts and subscriptions, bad actors often re-use credentials stolen or leaked from one service on other services.

“As a precaution, we highly and openly encourage all Ring users to enable two-factor authentication on their Ring account, add Shared Users (instead of sharing login credentials), use strong passwords, and regularly change their passwords.”

According to posts on hacking forums, hackers have engineered dedicated software for breaking into Ring security cameras.

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