Hacking Security Cameras
If you’ve seen a Hollywood caper movie in the last 20 years you know the old video-camera-spoofing trick. That’s where the criminal mastermind taps into a surveillance camera system and substitutes his own video stream, leaving hapless security guards watching an endless loop of absolutely-nothing-happening while the bank robber empties the vault.
Now white-hat hackers have demonstrated a technique that neatly replicates that old standby.
Amir Azam and Adrian Pastor, researchers at London-based security firm ProCheckUp, discovered that they can redirect what video file is played back by an AXIS 2100 surveillance camera, a common industrial security camera that boasts a web interface, allowing guards to monitor a building from anywhere in the world.
Voyeur • October 8, 2007 7:00 AM
“Fredrik Nilsson, Axis’s general manager in the U.S., stressed that the Axis 2100 was phased out three years ago and that newer cameras include more advanced security features, such as IP filtering that prevents outside access to cameras.”
I hope the latest cameras have more security than IP filtering.
I suspect that lots of cameras have been hooked up on the net because the owner doesn’t care whether somebody looks or not. Perhaps that will have to change now.