hacking wifi cameras?

[geedub]

the other thread got me wondering, if I had a wifi camera set up outside, even if it were encrypted, could someone break into and steal the feed? I don't know what freq most of these cameras run on but i'd imagine it would just pop on to your 802.11 network and allow you to select it as if it were a connected client on the lan. Anyone have any info about this? I was thinking about getting a camera for out front (not really for any reason, basically to experiment with) and see what happens.

[Barry]

Use a good wpa2 password and you should be okay. If you're really paranoid about it change it every few weeks.

[stran717]

Or set yourself up a Radius server to handle the WPA

[geedub]

so do they run over 802.11 or what? i'm going to go research this right now.

[Thorn]

If a camera is made by Linksys, DLink or the like, and is listed as "WiFi" then it will use 802.11. (Whether it is capable of WPA2 may be different. Check the specs.)

If it doesn't say "WiFi" and says only "2.4Ghz" then it is most likely does NOT use 802.11. It probably uses standard video modulation. The majority of surveillance cameras that use the ISM band are not made by computer equipment manufacturers, and do not use 802.11. They transmit in the clear using standard TV modulation. NTSC is the standard TV signal modulation in the US and Japan, while in most of the EU countries it is PAL.

[geedub]

If a camera is made by Linksys, DLink or the like, and is listed as "WiFi" then it will use 802.11. (Whether it is capable of WPA2 may be different. Check the specs.)

If it doesn't say "WiFi" and says only "2.4Ghz" then it is most likely does NOT use 802.11. It probably uses standard video modulation. The majority of surveillance cameras that use the ISM band are not made by computer equipment manufacturers, and do not use 802.11. They transmit in the clear using standard TV modulation. NTSC is the standard TV signal modulation in the US and Japan, while in most of the EU countries it is PAL.

so basically someone could get a signal receiver and hook it up to a tv and be watching the same feed? doesn't sound very safe.

[Thorn]

so basically someone could get a signal receiver and hook it up to a tv and be watching the same feed? doesn't sound very safe.

It's not, which is why I gave a talk on this very subject at a security conference in Washington DC four years ago.

The problem is that NTSC is actually rather hard to encrypt, and still end up with a usable signal at the other end. As a modulation method, NTSC dates back to the 1920's and 1930's when television was first experimental, and the only ones worried about any encryption were the some obscure agencies from half a dozen governments. The guys who were working on television as a broadcast medium probably never even heard of encryption, and almost certainly never would have thought of using it on their signals. They were designing something that everyone could receive for free. Besides, the state of the are for electronic encryption devices in the 1930's was the German Enigma which was used to encode and decode Morse Code transmissions on and off of paper. In other words, the encoding/decoding didn't take place in real time.

Like I've said, when video is used in the ISM band, usually the hardest part is finding the right channel. After that, it's just a matter of feeding it into a video display.