No it isn’t! - CIA

There used to be a website with a map and you could see all these open unsecured cameras they’d found around the world. Mostly by searching Google for the page name they all had.

Some of them seemed intentional, like traffic cams, cameras on the roof looking out over the city, etc, but there were so many fat men sat around watching TV in their underpants, random families in the kitchen, and so on.

It would be fine if the footage was end-to-end encrypted, meaning you need to transfer the encryption/decryption keys from device (e.g. a phone) to camera, and then manually between all devices that should have access to the decrypted footage.

Camera would only ever send out encrypted footage, and thus it would be insufficient to have access to the cloud account if you want to view the footage - you would need both access to the account (to obtain the encrypted data) and the decryption key (to actually decrypt it). The decryption key must never reach any 3rd party servers and can only be manually transferred between devices that should have access.

There are still possible attack vectors, like malicious firmware updates, or the viewer client app updates, but those are very difficult to exploit, and pretty much exist in most “secure” software today (including from companies like Google, Apple, Meta, etc.). They could be mitigated by hardware design (do the encryption in hardware, camera’s software never has access to decrypted footage) and open source viewer clients that the user controls, but I would consider a camera sufficiently secure (for non-sensitive locations) without those.

It is a bad idea. On one hand, we have the mean to make them quite secure. There is no such thing as an unbreakable encryption, but with proper key management and using decent enough algorithms we can totally do something that puts your camera out of reach of most thing that are not nation-scale organisations. On the other hand, it’s mildly more inconvenient than “installing an app and entering your email”, as it might require stuff like doing a tiny little bit of setting up.

So, the unsecure/“trust the service” way it is.

I’d argue that it’s more convenient to have clouds connect for recording and storage purposes but so many cameras come with SD cards built in now that the cloud storage isn’t even really an advantage anymore either.

What are the alternatives?

Oooh what was he v1 fiasco?

But How can I see stuff remotely?

Using Lorex right now but I don’t really know how it works. Some type of NVR setup but allows for remote viewing on their app. I think it’s just sending video to lorex servers so we can stream on phone but don’t know if they’re saving the feed on their end or not. Haven’t heard any bad things from this brand so I hope it’s safe. Too lazy to do all the tailscale stuff.

Yeah this is why I have mine outdoors, except my 3d printer one. Never record what you wish to be private.

This is my father. We have about 10 ring cameras surrounding the house and I fucking hate it. Meanwhile, I’m also a distributor for security cameras and could easily replace all of them for free. He still insists no. He likes that he can easily prey on me when I go outside for 1-2 seconds to grab a drink or go outside for a smoke.

I already hate feeling watched but the need for audio is just ridiculous. Law enforcement can basically just intercept the feeds and listen/watch you anytime they want to. The FBI abused a spy tool 280,000 times this year, so I doubt they’ll respect your rights, if you even have any at this point.

I wish I grew up during the days without cameras being on every single building.

Fuckin legend.

That was Steam

There are still thousands of unsecured cameras from that leak a while back.

Those are still around. They are the local services that people suggest instead of Nest or something, where “you control your own data”. Turns out nothing is foolproof.

You can still do this if you use https://www.shodan.io/

It’ll let you find IoT devices and cameras connected to the internet if you know what to search for and an alarming amount of them are locked behind an admin/admin login.

I advise against nosying around because there’s a near 100% chance that it’s illegal to do so in your jurisdiction.

These cameras work very well with the wz_mini_hacks firmware completely cut off from the internet. I’m using frigate and home assistant for notifying and it’s honestly way better than the wyze app ever was.

I’m running frigate on a Lenovo m900 with the coral USB accelerator and my CPU usage is super low so you could probably get away with the Pi4!

I’ve been using Amcrest cameras with Frigate and a Coral USB. It’s been working perfectly. My cameras are on a VLAN with no Internet access and it hasn’t caused any issues.

Is the Pi4 on sale still around the 100$ mark?

I’d love another Pi at the original.prices

I’ve been partial to amcrest they’re affordable and “us” based even though they’re rebranded dahua cameras. Everything I’ve read says they’re compatible with frigate and even home assistant if you plan to use that as well. I’ve been trying to do a similar setup for myself.

They are cheap and work decent most of the time. I have a few and don’t have many complaints. But I also treat them as if they were publicly accessible. I hope someone got to watch my cats out in their catio and it made their day better.