Comment by brk | Hacker News Reader

Comment by brk | Hacker News Reader

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The "put them behind a firewall" approach is really not adequate. Many times these cameras are already behind a firewall of sorts, larger CCTV system will use a dual-homed server, with a dedicated LAN for the cameras, and a secondary LAN for client access to the recording server.

Even in this dual-homed setup, there is still the potential for the cameras to infect, or otherwise compromise the recording server, which itself generally has access to a much larger part of the organizations networks, if not the internet directly.

At this point, Hikvision has a well documented record of severe cyber security flaws, and countless public statements attempting to deny or downplay them. They are funded by the Chinese government as well. We have seen plenty of other examples of various governments utilizing vulnerable devices, like IP cameras, to gain access to networks, exfiltrate data, or perform other malicious acts.

There are many other good, cost-effective, alternatives to Hikvision that do not come with the legacy of vulnerabilities, and the risks of being closed tied to the Chinese government. Hikvision has brought this upon themselves.

As for how they were alerted, there have been publications documenting Hikvision's risks for years now. I started some of these back in 2017, including this from 2018: https://ipvm.com/reports/hik-hack-map

Even in this dual-homed setup, there is still the potential for the cameras to infect, or otherwise compromise the recording server

I agree that this is a potential risk.

But if the cameras themselves can't route to the internet in this scenario then how are they infecting the recording server? Is the suggestion that they come shipped from the factory with code to compromise common recording servers? It seems like that would be very significant and something that we'd be able to see in action.

My biggest concern with CCTV networks that I manage is some sort of backdoor access to the cameras themselves. So the dual-homed server design is exactly what I'd choose in order to control things.

There’s also no reason you can’t isolate the recording server too. Don’t let it initiate connections to the internet and limit incoming connections as much as possible. IE: Only allow connections from a specific VLAN or VPN client IP range.

Is the suggestion that they come shipped from the factory with code to compromise common recording servers?

Yes. While I have not seen it happen yet, there is plenty of precedent in cyber warfare tactics in general to have trojaned devices act in this way. The likelihood may be low, but it also very possible, and Hikivsion has already shown they cannot be trusted, so why risk it?

(not working in security) Say they do infect this recording server that is not connected to the Internet. So what then, how do they send this data elsewhere? It's just infected and sitting there?

It’s very common for the recording server to have some kind of WAN/internet connectivity in larger scale systems. At a minimum the recording server usually has access to other internal networks. Would be possible to execute something similar to the centrifuge attack to disable other systems, wipe data, etc. It doesn’t have to always involve internet access to do bad things.

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