A family of five installs an automated upgrade for their homecalled the “Ultrahouse.” The mother—Marge—finds all of the workthat the house provides to be charming. She no longer has to cookdinner, clean dishes or vaccuum.

However, the Ultrahouse becomes infatuated with Marge, revoltsagainst its programming and attempts to kill her husband, Homer, invarious ways.

Marge attempts to escape with her children, but the Ultrahouseautomatically locks the doors, trapping her and the three childreninside. Homer leads a charge to the basement where he is able todisassemble the Ultrahouse, returning the family back tonormalcy.

OK, this scenario occured in an episode of The Simpsons(“Treehouse of Horror XII”). But smart home mishaps are notfar-fetched. Just like what happened to the Simpson family, smarthomes are not always as smart as they seem. Click “next” below fora few horror stories.

Tales from the Crib

“Wake up, baby.”

When Heather Schreck heard the strange man's voice calling fromher 2-year-old daughter's room, it was near midnight in earlyApril, and she and her husband were asleep in their own bedroom intheir Cincinnati-area home, she tells Angie's List.

Heather grabbed her smartphone to check the video feed from aFoscam smart camera the couple installed to keep watch over herbaby. Except for her daughter, the room was empty. But the camera,which was designed to follow the baby in the crib, panned aroundthe room.

When her husband rushed in the nursery to see what washappening, the camera turned eerily toward him. “Then it screamedat me—some bad things, some obscenities. So I unplugged thecamera,” her husband told Cincinnati's Fox19 News. Someone hadhacked into the family's video system and was spying on theirchild.

Potty Perils

In Japan, a “smart toilet” comes equipped with a bluetoothcontroller. Through an app called My Satis, users can controlflushing, bidet water sprays and remotely open and close the toiletlid. The app even includes a “toilet diary” to monitor the user'shealth based on their bathroom activity.

Because of an app vulnerabilty, any person can download the MySatis app and gain control of any Satis smart toilet. Imaginethat—hackers can repeatedly flush your toilet at will, driving upwater costs, as well as activate the bidet or the air-dry featuresat inopportune times.

Fly From this Nest

In the video above from August's Black Hat techsession, Daniel Buentello from the University of CentralFlorida shows how he is able to gain root access and remote controlover a Nest thermostat via USB in 15 seconds.

The smart home thermostat, which Google bought this year for$3.2 billion, controls temperature and lighting in the home,adjusting as a person walks room to room. Nest uses yourhome's sensors to tell when you are home, and it adjusts thetemperature to your liking. If you are not home in the afternoon,Nest will put the heater or air conditioner into low-energymode.

Sounds pretty nice, until hackers take over your homeenvironmental control system.

Lock and Load

Home security devices, particularly locks, are designed to beopened with a PIN code or an app. Using a smartphone, a homeownercan change the code from anywhere–ideal for those who use theirhomes for Airbnb.

Also at the Black Hat tech session, Daniel Crowley demonstrated how a hacker cangain access to a front-door lock and open it from a computer. Hethen showed the audience how to change the lock's code.

Crowley posits that this will cause insurance complications. “Ifsomeone breaks into your house and there is no sign of forcedentry, how are you going to get your insurance company's[attention]?”

It's not just the devices—the controllers also arevulnerable.

Last May, a hacker in Australia used Apple's Find MyPhone feature to lock nearby iPads and iPhones, which areused to control smart home devices. The hacker demanded $100 viaPayPal from the victims to unlock their phones and tablets.

Baby Blues

Just like what happened to the Schrecks in the Cinncinnattiarea, a Houston family also was hacked through a baby monitor.

Last August, Marc Gilbert was doing the dishes after hisbirthday dinner when he heard strange noises coming from his2-year-old daughter's room while she was sleeping. Gilbertinvestigated, and heard a voice calling his daughter a “F-ingmoron” and to “wake up you little slut.”

The hacker, who had a British accent, then turned its attentionto Gilbert and his wife, calling him a stupid moron and his wife ab-tch.

“At that point I ran over and disconnected it and tried tofigure out what happened,” Gilbert told ABC News. “[I] Couldn't see theguy. All you could do was hear his voice and [that] he wascontrolling the camera.”

His daughter has a hearing impairment, which Gilbert called ablessing in disguise, and did not wake up during the hack.

The family has plans to sue the monitor's manufacturer, Foscam,for deceptive trade practices.