Sunday, March 31, 2013

Digital Cameras Easily Turned into Spying Devices

Newer cameras increasingly sport built-in Wi-Fi capabilities or allow users to add SD cards to achieve them in order to be able to upload and share photos and videos as soon as they take them.

But, as proven by Daniel Mende and Pascal Turbing, security researchers... these capabilities also have security flaws that can be easily exploited for turning these cameras into spying devices.

Mende and Turbing chose to compromise Canon's EOS-1D X DSLR camera an exploit each of the four ways it can communicate with a network. Not only have they been able to hijack the information sent from the camera, but have also managed to gain complete control of it. ...like uploading porn to the camera, or turning it into a surveillance device. (more) (video presentation - long and boring)


Solution in a nutshell... Before purchasing any Wi-Fi enabled device, make sure it supports encryption.