3 million home devices were hijacked. Is yours next?

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I set up a smart plug on my freezer last month. If the power goes out and comes back, it sends me a notification. Sounds trivial until you realize that a freezer can thaw and refreeze without you knowing, silently ruining hundreds of dollars of stored food. A $15 smart plug caught a brief outage I would have missed entirely. That's automation working for preparedness.

Here's what I've got this morning.

Smart Home Features That Actually Help in Emergencies

We covered smart home security in Issue 47. This week is about using home automation for broader preparedness: monitoring conditions, automating responses, and getting alerts that matter when you're not watching.

Smart plugs with energy monitoring tell you when devices lose and regain power. Plugging your freezer, refrigerator, or sump pump into a monitored smart plug means you get a phone notification if any of them go offline. During a vacation or a workday, that notification could save a flooded basement or a freezer full of spoiled food.

Temperature and humidity sensors placed in critical areas (basement, attic, pipe-vulnerable spaces) alert you when conditions reach dangerous thresholds. A sensor near exterior pipes that alerts at 35 degrees gives you time to open faucets and prevent freezing. A humidity sensor in the basement that alerts above 70% catches water intrusion early.

Water leak detectors placed under sinks, behind toilets, near water heaters, and by the washing machine cost $10 to $20 each and can alert you within seconds of a leak. The average water damage insurance claim is over $10,000. A $15 sensor can prevent most of them.

Automated lighting schedules make your home look occupied when you're away. Lights that turn on and off at varied times deter the opportunistic burglar more effectively than leaving all lights on (which signals nobody's home because nobody lives with every light blazing).

Smart thermostats can alert you if your home temperature drops below a safe threshold, preventing pipe freezes when you're traveling. They can also optimize energy use during grid stress events, reducing your draw during peak demand when the grid is most vulnerable.

The limitation: all smart home devices require internet and power to function. In an extended outage, they go dark. They're a layer of preparedness, not a replacement for your non-digital plans. Think of automation as the first responder that alerts you. Your analog plans are the actual response.

Place a water leak detector behind your toilet or under your kitchen sink.

A basic leak detector costs $10 to $20 and beeps loudly when it contacts water. No smart features needed, though Wi-Fi models send phone alerts. This one sensor can prevent thousands in water damage.

29 Cyberattack Attempts Hit the Average Smart Home Every Day — and Most Devices Are Not Patched

Smart home networks absorbed an average of 29 cyberattack attempts per day in 2026, according to security researchers monitoring residential network traffic. The DOJ's March 2026 disruption of four major IoT botnets — Aisuru, KimWolf, JackSkid, and Mossad — confirmed the scale: 3 million home routers, cameras, and digital video recorders had been silently recruited as attack infrastructure. The root cause is firmware: 33% of consumer IoT devices run outdated firmware with known, exploitable security flaws, and 35% still ship with default credentials that are publicly listed online. AI-driven IoT attacks surged 54% in 2026, with autonomous malware that learns and adapts faster than most home networks are patched.

Every device in your smart home monitoring setup — temperature sensors, smart plugs, security cameras — runs on a network that needs the same security discipline as the devices themselves. Updating firmware, changing default passwords, and placing IoT devices on a dedicated guest network are the baseline countermeasures.

Source: HelpNetSecurity, SecureIoT, Asimily

Clint Emerson's 100 Deadly Skills includes principles of intelligence gathering that translate directly to home monitoring. In tradecraft, awareness isn't about being present everywhere. It's about having systems that extend your awareness beyond your physical presence.

Emerson's civilian application: sensors and automation are your home's intelligence network. They report conditions you can't observe directly, from water leaks in the basement to temperature drops in the garage to power loss on the freezer. Each sensor is a remote observer that never sleeps. The information they provide, delivered to your phone, gives you the ability to act before small problems become large ones.

FBI and International Partners Shut Down 4 IoT Botnets That Had Weaponized 3 Million Home Devices

In March 2026, the FBI working with agencies from Germany and Canada disrupted four criminal networks — Aisuru, KimWolf, JackSkid, and Mossad — that had silently infected more than 3 million home devices, including routers, IP cameras, and digital video recorders. The botnets issued over 315,000 DDoS attack commands combined. Aisuru alone was linked to a record 31.4 terabit-per-second attack in November 2025. The networks gained access to internal home networks by compromising devices that residents assumed were protected behind their routers, then used those devices as launch points for attacks on infrastructure worldwide.

The DOJ disruption removed these specific networks, but the underlying vulnerability remains unchanged. Millions of home IoT devices run outdated firmware with known exploits, and the smart home devices covered in this issue — temperature sensors, smart plugs, water leak detectors — share the same residential network. Keeping firmware current and isolating IoT devices on a separate network segment are the two highest-leverage steps any smart home owner can take.

Source: HelpNetSecurity, The Hacker News, Cloudflare

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Govee WiFi Temperature and Humidity Sensor (3-Pack)

I placed these in three locations: the basement (near water pipes), the garage (temperature monitoring), and the attic (heat and humidity). Each sensor reports to an app on my phone every few minutes and sends alerts when thresholds are crossed.

The basement sensor is set to alert if temperature drops below 38 degrees (pipe freeze risk) or humidity rises above 65% (moisture intrusion). The garage sensor monitors temperature for my stored supplies. The attic sensor tracks summer heat buildup that can damage stored items.

In four months of use, the basement sensor caught a humidity spike from a slow drip I didn't know about. The repair cost $50. Without the sensor, the water damage would have been significantly more.

Setup: download app, insert battery, place sensor. Total setup time for three sensors: about 10 minutes. About $50 for a 3-pack.

Budget alternative: A basic indoor/outdoor thermometer ($10) placed near vulnerable pipes. No alerts, but it gives you a visual check of conditions in cold-sensitive areas.

Overrated: Voice-controlled "smart home" features for preparedness. Asking Alexa to turn on a light is convenient but adds zero preparedness value. The automation that matters is monitoring and alerting, not voice commands.

Underrated: Smart plugs with power monitoring on critical appliances. A $15 plug on your sump pump that alerts when power is lost could be the difference between a dry basement and a flooded one.

Govee.com — Temperature, humidity, and water leak sensors for home monitoring.

Home Assistant — Open-source platform for integrating multiple smart devices into one system.

ThePrepared.com: Smart Home for Emergencies — Guide to automation features with preparedness value.

EFF: Smart Home Privacy — Privacy considerations for connected devices.

Conflict resolution in stressful times. How to handle disagreements, resource disputes, and tension within your household and community when everyone's on edge.

PS: That freezer smart plug? It's caught two brief power blips that I would have never noticed. Both times the freezer restarted fine. But now I know they happened, and if they become frequent, I'll know something needs attention before I lose a freezer full of food.