True although there are previous technologies enabling home appliances to be connected and controlled from outside through radio and telephone couplers. X10 which dates back to the mid 70s is probably the most famous one. Back then there were no such things as encryption protocols: if someone knew your air conditioner was connected to your phone line he could turn it on just by phoning to your home and sending the right tone over the line. Hacking was just a matter of time spent finding the right frequencies; no firewall to prevent anyone from trying a thousand times until someone would hopefully notice and pull the cord. Despite those "vulnerabilities" though, I never heard about abusing other peoples devices. I would be interested in hearing experiences from actual owners (or hackers:) of those old systems.