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I would love to see a documentary / an interview of the developer (team?) behind these Chinese crappy products. Are they really that incompetent or is it just t

by Yaggo 11y ago

I would love to see a documentary / an interview of the developer (team?) behind these Chinese crappy products. Are they really that incompetent or is it just totally different culture? I mean, after all they are capable of bundling the all FOSS together, writing some code by their own, and even shipping a working product, but they don't realize that running commands as root from query string is horrible idea? That's hard to buy.

witty_username 11y ago
Maybe the culture is "get it done now" with no care for security and the managers may be ignoring the engineers.
dmm 11y ago
I use a bunch of cheap ip cameras of various brands: foscam, crenova, etc. They all have telnet backdoors, which is actually pretty convenient for me. I keep mine on a separate lan which can't connect to the internet or the other more-trusted lan. The average grandpa connecting these things to the internet is screwed though.
- soylentcola 11y ago
  That's essentially where I am. I actually want a simple camera with options for standard format streams over IP so I can connect them to a NAS on its own LAN, hidden in a closet for a cheap security setup using hardware I already own. But so many of these things are pitched as "oh so easy to set up! Just plug it in and open an app on your iPhone and you can monitor your house from anywhere!" It's bad enough that this app-centric branding/marketing pitch ignores the fact that you never even see the popup saying "for security purposes, change your password", much less mentions just how this easy access works. Sure, it's easier to just plug something in and get a picture with no more action needed than pointing at a square on a screen. But even the ones that can be made moderately secure (at least versus casual Shodan searchers and Google dorks) by setting a password and turning off DDNS, telnet, ftp, etc. are often left in their wide-open setup state by users. On the flip side, I don't want something that only works with a "cloud" subscription or by going through a third party that I may or may not have to pay for monthly. I just want to be able to pull an mp4 or mjpeg stream from an old computer running iSpy or my Synology on the local-only LAN. tl;dr: these things are affordable and very useful if you know how to set them up but by default they're wide open and often irresponsibly marketed as plug-and-play and never actually configured.
OJFord 11y ago
I knew a guy who spent an internship after his first year of university at some such place in China. He said he told them the PSU design was no good (dangerously ungood), proposed part substitutions were invalid, but nobody cared. It's just ~~desire~~ mandate to "ship it cheap", and no desire or care at all. He didn't go back.

by Yaggo 11y ago

witty_username 11y ago

Maybe the culture is "get it done now" with no care for security and the managers may be ignoring the engineers.

dmm 11y ago

I use a bunch of cheap ip cameras of various brands: foscam, crenova, etc. They all have telnet backdoors, which is actually pretty convenient for me. I keep mine on a separate lan which can't connect to the internet or the other more-trusted lan. The average grandpa connecting these things to the internet is screwed though.

soylentcola 11y ago
That's essentially where I am. I actually want a simple camera with options for standard format streams over IP so I can connect them to a NAS on its own LAN, hidden in a closet for a cheap security setup using hardware I already own. But so many of these things are pitched as "oh so easy to set up! Just plug it in and open an app on your iPhone and you can monitor your house from anywhere!" It's bad enough that this app-centric branding/marketing pitch ignores the fact that you never even see the popup saying "for security purposes, change your password", much less mentions just how this easy access works. Sure, it's easier to just plug something in and get a picture with no more action needed than pointing at a square on a screen. But even the ones that can be made moderately secure (at least versus casual Shodan searchers and Google dorks) by setting a password and turning off DDNS, telnet, ftp, etc. are often left in their wide-open setup state by users. On the flip side, I don't want something that only works with a "cloud" subscription or by going through a third party that I may or may not have to pay for monthly. I just want to be able to pull an mp4 or mjpeg stream from an old computer running iSpy or my Synology on the local-only LAN. tl;dr: these things are affordable and very useful if you know how to set them up but by default they're wide open and often irresponsibly marketed as plug-and-play and never actually configured.

OJFord 11y ago

I knew a guy who spent an internship after his first year of university at some such place in China. He said he told them the PSU design was no good (dangerously ungood), proposed part substitutions were invalid, but nobody cared. It's just ~~desire~~ mandate to "ship it cheap", and no desire or care at all. He didn't go back.