I was living in a 10th story penthouse apartment as a new building started beside us. The contractor put a webcam high up on the structure so people could watch construction live on a website. They left the control panel fully exposed so all you had to do was find the IP address of the camera and boom, you had full control. I would point it directly at my apartment's window and wave, or my friends would do silly shit. Every morning the cam would be reset, but they never actually secured it. That's when I realized how fucked we were, 20 years ago.
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I wouldn't be surprised if it got found by Shodan, which scans the entire internet, indexes it and is easily searchable.
There's actually quite a few open webcams on the internet that shouldn't be.
I seem to recall an early 00s screed, perhaps by Bruce Schneier or someone of that ilk, suggesting a future in which yes we have surveillance in the public square, but since it's public, everyone has full access to all the public-place cameras at any time. So you could use it to, say, see around the corner of an alley at night.
That was David Brin in The Transparent Society. He has continued to riff on the theme periodically since then.
A city in the KC Metro just signed a contract with Flock for drone cameras. Fuck that Big Brother bullshit.
red light companies most likely use some form of AI/facial recognition.
red light cameras - at least in australia - are stock standard canon DSLRs… they take images, but not video
there are some newer ones that do things like photos of people using their phones stopped at lights etc, but generally speed/red light and “single purpose” cameras will just be doing stills, and wouldn’t be too useful for anything other than a single photo when the sensor triggers it
WA police just introduced cameras that recored the inside of a vehicle (including the backseat so yay to childrens privacy) and using AI deternine whether you are driving dangerously.
Snip their wires, spray paint their lens, or put a hammer on the end of a tall stick. it should be easy to take these things out. Of course don't do anything or have anything on you that would identify you were in the area at the time of these actions.
There is now enough adjacent cctv coverage to follow your approach and exit from the scene of the crime. The rush is that another Flock camera is used to identify, and then make an example out of you or me.
Air rifles are pretty cheap too if you can shoot straight.
I am wondering if a super soaker with very salty water would work. It should heavily obscure the lens when dried and if someone doesn't clean it properly it will scratch it to hell.
Rain is a thing.
Cameras are typically angled down and have a little rain hood.
If the lens is getting wet, it's an awfully shitty surveillance camera.
Did you miss the part about unencrypted admin creds being widely available on the internet?
That doesn't make it a shitty camera, that makes it unsecured. Those are very different problems.
Water with flour and dye
Honestly? Good. These cameras should either be public or dismantled. I'd like to see them dismantled, but worst case scenario is the current one where they're selectively used by law enforcement
iirc they weren't even the first ones to discover this because there was already someone on the blackmarket selling data collected from exposed cameras and endpoints which included PII of entire police departments.
Is there a directory of these cameras? Or are they gonna make me do all the legwork?
These specifically or just Flock cams?
Here's a start: DeFlock Me
I meant the unlocked interfaces. I'm familiar with deflock.me and have contributed to it. But thank you.
Wholly fuck!
I feel like Flock Cameras would describe a random individuals walk home from work the same way Andy Samberg does in the music video "Like a Boss".
Your walk home sounds a lot more interesting than mine.
Whoooooooosh