The CCTV cameras are installed to ensure the safety and security of both physical security and material security. But do you know how secured your CCTV cameras are? You will no more be safe and secured if your CCTV cameras hacked. You will be embarrassed and vulnerable to know that your CCTV cameras can be easily hacked. There are many instances of CCTV camera hackings around the world and the most authentic about CCTV camera hacking is the research of “Cloudview” which says that CCTV systems can be easily hacked by the cyber attackers.
A popular well-established report titled as “is your CCTV system secure from cyber-attack?” further claims that there are major vulnerabilities both in traditional DVR-based CCTV cameras and the cloud-based video systems giving open door opportunities for the hackers to hijack connections to the IP address of CCTV systems.
In one hacking incident, the hackers placed five routers, IP cameras and DVRs on the internet open for all. They were running the latest software and firmware and they hacked one device within few minutes and rests within a day. They did not reveal which one to be first hacked and which the last. However, they revealed that the traditional DVR-based system has port forwarding and dynamic DNS problems and has a problem in connection to firmware updates that made it vulnerable to hacking.In the cases of cloud video solutions, the issue was the port forwarding as well as the lack of encryption and the failure of using secure protocols.
As a matter of fact, any insecure embedded device that is connected to the internet has the potential vulnerability of cyber-attacks and this includes the CCTV systems too. Eventually, the CCTV system along with getting itself vulnerable for hijacking has the risk of providing opportunities as a gateway to the entire network by the hackers to access and extract all data and corrupt all their systems if they intend to do so. The contemporary DDoS or the “Distributed Denial of Services” attacks which are growing day by day prove that the hackers and cybercriminals have explored the vulnerabilities in the CCTV cameras and they can easily hack them.
Therefore, it is recommended that the organizations owning CCTV cameras should immediately increase their security by various methods like by changing the username and password with something new and secure from the default, and by following the instruction of Information Commissioner’s office and Surveillance Camera Commissioner guidelines. They should further encrypt all their CCTV data when it is stored as well as in transit.
