South Korea police say 120k home cameras hacked for 'sexploitation' footage | Hacker News Reader

South Korea police say 120k home cameras hacked for 'sexploitation' footage

bbc.com

43 points_____k43 comments

With the Reolink brand you can only install their web cameras via their phone app and only with the GPS turned on and set to "precise“ mode. Seriously, when the GPS was set to “approximate“ it would not allow me to proceed.

Reolink is a Chinese company....

Most of them are anyway; even Tapo was (in name only) spun off from TP-Link and couldn't be set up without bluetooth enabled. I almost entered Reo's garden while researching Ubiquiti and Unifi.

I resolved the problem by temporarily installing a "Fake GPS location" app on my phone and permanently blocking the camera mac address on my router. I can still access the camera remotely using Tailscale. I have a Tailscale node running on a Raspberry Pi on my internal network. It works well.

I keep them in a separate vlan with outbound internet enabled but firewalled from my main network and am still building a ruleset for blocking all *.cn and china-based ipv4 addr blocks. One interesting tidbit during the aws-east-1 downtime was that tapo remote viewing was inaccessible while wyze was okay.

maybe this is a cheap comment but i truly cannot see the value in a home video security system - the cost of which is probably comparable to a decent home insurance policy with theft coverage. i don't even want cameras in my home that i have full control over, let alone internet-connected cameras that can be viewed by third parties (authorized or not)... and i'm boring at home. anything i own of sentimental value has little to no monetary value, and the latter category is all things that can be replaced.

what value do these systems actually provide to anyone but the manufacturers and those capable of exploiting them?

I have two friends that installed them to basically deter their wives from cheating at their house when they are away. You could argue it's to 'catch' but obviously they aren't even going to attempt it knowing the cameras are present.

i feel like there are a lot of things i could say but i'll leave it at "woof"

In regards to how often people cheat in marriage (the stats are a bit sad), or of someone using cameras to deter it from happening?

yes, and more! but my feelings on the situations you've described are off topic :)

By the time you decide to install cameras to deter your partner from cheating, your relationship is already way beyond fucked.

I also know people that installed gps trackers and audio listening devices in cars to verify cheating. Everyone that needed to verify for their own sanity did indeed find proof.

Fyi, this was amongst car salesman. But I can't say the 10%+ stat is too far off for other industries too.

> Everyone that needed to verify for their own sanity did indeed find proof.

i suspect in more than a few of those cases. their severe paranoia behavior actually led to the break which led directly to the cheating.

seriously, if you’re that paranoid, either seek individual/couples counseling or just end the relationship, something else is very very broken.

and if your partner is tracking you, run fast and run far, that person is not well.

Suspects cheating.

Finds evidence of cheating.

"Try not being so paranoid."

removing a bunch of the context of what i said does not somehow magically alter what i was expressing in my post.

that’s very bad faith, hn is better than that.

Oh are we not making bad faith arguments now?

That's quite abusive behavior. I'm sorry for these wives, having to deal with this as it's probably not the only thing they have to endure. And how do the spouses "prove" they're not cheating when they're away - or is that not so important because they can choose to do whatever?

Can we stop labeling anything that makes someone 'unhappy' as abusive. Its not and i'm tired of pretending it is.

Installing cameras to control/monitor your spouse is definitely abusive behavior.

You cant CONTROL someone with observation, you can influence, but you can't control.

If this were true people would act a lot better in public, they do not.

Thank you. Words matter.

I notice most gfs these days resort to "why do I have to..." when upset. Which bothers me because I have never ever said someone MUST do anything.

There are many things a person should do. But almost nothing they actually have to do.

This is absolutely abusive behavior. Placing a camera to watch a partner so they don't do something is controlling and removes human agency.

That.is.abuse.

How about we stop letting abusers think that human beings are property meant to be controlled.

Are your cameras at work watching you abusive, is your macbook camera abusive, is your zoom calls abusive ?

Nobody controls anyone with an camera, this is no different than leaving a note to your kids "DONT EAT ALL THE FOOD IN THE FRIDGE".

Its the misuse of it that is abusive.

Vote down a all you want. Your anger shows your weakness.

If the wives want to cheat, won't they then just do it somewhere else? Or is that actually the point, they just don't want their memories of the house tainted, or to be traumatized by coming home to it?

partner installing cameras to try and catch them cheating? that’s creepy af, no wonder they’re cheating.

if they can’t leave their creepy partner for some reason, hopefully they look up how to bypass security cameras in an obvious way just to annoy the creepy guy.

> I have two friends that installed them to basically deter their wives from cheating at their house when they are away.

In some coutries, this will land them in jail.

The women cheating would land in jail?

Or the guy installing obvious cameras in his house that his wife knows about and agrees to have there?

> but obviously they aren't even going to attempt it knowing the cameras are present.

Attempt it at home. Ftfy.

EDIT: If an existing relationship isn't enough to "deter" cheating, nothing is. You might as well find a divorce attorney than put up cameras.

Obviously. Although it also adds fake excuses about location and time frames to the mix. The cameras also work to make a wife think twice about going out on Thursday night and telling her husband she's gone to sleep.

A friend, that never would have dreamt about using cameras like this, only found out his wife was cheating when she had a major car crash at 3am returning from her affair partners house. He was at a national lab where he works the night shift.

Why are all your friends in bad marriages? 2 who apparently need to monitor their wife's behavior 24/7, a third who's been cheated on. Or did the other 2 install cameras after finding out about the car crash? Either way, something's up homie. This ain't healthy.

I used to work in car sales, and now do construction saas sales and interact with the workers a lot. So 95% male coworkers/friends.

And since I'm in sales overall I have a lot of friends and I talk a lot. And I like to drink, and guys with relationship troubles are driven to drink and gravitate to me during that stage of their life.

And I'm single at 40, so I hear about a lot of relationship trouble because I'm easier to talk to than a married guy which doesn't exactly want to hear about cheating and failed relationships.

useful if:

- you are in a high crime area. footage can be useful to police.

- you have a babysitter or nanny for a young child, and want to deter unethical / wrongful behavior.

- you have a pet that you leave at home for parts of the day, and want to keep an eye on them. to “check in” while on the go.

- you have an elderly family member and don’t live nearby, and want to be able to quickly see if they’ve fallen. for example if they call you daily and suddenly aren’t answering their phone. Good peace of mind.

- pointing a camera at the stovetop can be useful to solve the age old question “did i forget to turn the stove off?”

- pointing a camera out the window to see something fun. For example birds, deer, squirrels, etc.

That’s just what i could think of in 2 minutes. I’m sure there are other use cases.

i think practically all of these hypotheticals can be addressed without signing over your in-home privacy to a third party who doesn't consider IT security a top priority though.

I hear you. But for a normal consumer who’s afraid of technology? Doubt it.

As a nerd I can easily set up some webcams on my wifi, place them on a firewalled IOT vlan, and securely expose them through the ios home app (with HomeAssistant)…and call it a day.

But your average person has no clue how to do that, or anything similar…nor do they care. Sad but true.

I know how to do that, but I don't.

Outside: porch pirates and the occasional sneaky meth head; inside: basement boiler amperage and fuel capacity readouts.

The solution is to block the camera’s mac address at the router and then access them remotely via Tailscale.

They can provide footage of people stealing from your home to hand over to the police.

Every privacy issue slated against security cameras can be made towards the security camera and microphone everybody has in their pocket at all times.

Years and years ago, I used to poke around on shodan looking for open NAS's for media and eventually stumbled on the open cameras. It's wild what some folks have shared openly with everyone.

i’ve said it before on similar stories and i’ll say again, ill never understand people who put cameras inside their house.

I had one for keeping an eye on my dog when I first started leaving him out of his crate while I went to work. It did not record to the cloud, and I would physically unplug it when I came home.

What about non-internet connected cameras?

I use one for when my place is vacant, and it just records to SD card with major changes being kept and the rest overwriting. Keep it relatively hidden and should I be burgled at least there's something to show the police.

sigh

Reply on news.ycombinator.com