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  • Author Author: shabaz
  • Date Created: Date Created
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Swann cameras may be worth avoiding for a while..

shabaz

Rather shocking security issue, reported here:

https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-44628399

 

Long story short, users are seeing video captured from cameras they don't own.

Quite pathetic how come the system would allow such a situation to occur so easily - both the hardware and the software ought to have been designed to eliminate this possibility, from using guaranteed unique hardware keys (permanently burned in) to software developed and tested at a significant level commensurate to the high value of the data (i.e. the video) that was at risk if they got it wrong..

It's not as if security technologies do not exist. They exist, but in the reported system, on the face of it, maybe they were badly implemented or were not used at all.

  • in reply to e14phil

    >I do feel sorry for anyone that tries to check on any of my cam...

    Haha!

     

    I bought a few similar cams, but only so I can watch birds nests and keep an eye on the attic.

     

    I just positioned my camera perfectly for a new nest being built, but I'm kicking myself for being lazy - I had left the proper mount up in the attic and I didn't want to go in there again, so I mounted the nesting camera using double-sided sticky foam mounts... and they all failed, causing the cam to fall and totally break image

     

    So now I can only just watch from a distance. Sad panda.

     

    -Nico

  • in reply to ntewinkel

    Nest has had some problems recently. Imagine on a cold day not being able to turn on your heating due to server maintenance.

  • I seem to only buy cheap Chinese wifi cameras, probably streaming direct through a Chinese server or I think I am growing my own little botnet.

    But.. I do feel sorry for anyone that tries to check on any of my cam when I have just stepped out of the shower image

  • in reply to ntewinkel

    I think it's just a lack of respect for their customers with some of their most valuable data.

    Engineers have gone to the effort of developing suitable security chips and software technologies, and organisations like banks manage to prevent users having the same username, and securing bank records, using known well established methods, many of which are open source. Sure things can go wrong and there could be zero-day vulnerabilities, but what happened here was through ordinary use of the product and is just embarrassing. They possibly didn't invest in the hardware and software to ensure security, because they possibly didn't respect nor place a decent value on their customer's data.

  • in reply to shabaz

    Oh wow, when a  'global leader' has this kind of bugs, it makes you wonder whether we are heading for a tech collapse!