4 ms·

If I were guarding against this, I'd run wires. Everything else feels like a band-aid attempt. I love WiFi, but I hate WiFi.

by k8svet 3y ago

chatmasta 3y ago
I would run wires too, but you're just shifting the problem. Now someone can cut the power, rip the camera out of its socket, follow the wires to the hard drives, and take them with the rest of their loot.
- micromacrofoot 3y ago
  Ideally you'd have hardwired cameras with a battery backup that store to local drives with a cloud backup. This requires significantly more upfront and ongoing costs... and most criminals aren't sophisticated enough to cut power or jam wifi. Lots of times they won't even wear masks. The average property crime is still an opportunistic smash and grab. Stick up wifi cameras are an affordable "good enough" for most cases.
- hwbehrens 3y ago
  The weak point is always the network connection. My cameras are PoE backed with a UPS, and the footage is replicated locally and to the cloud, but that replication still requires a network connection (which is also on battery). So, if someone jammed the cell network, cut my wired uplink, and then removed every drive they found, they can successfully prevent me from seeing them. I'll still know that something is happening, I guess? Plus they can always just wear masks. The real point here is, even if you capture a super-clear 1080p picture of the criminal(s) face, the police mostly won't care. It's just a little security theater that you put on for yourself, and sometimes your insurance company.
  - pixl97 3y ago
    > if you capture a super-clear 1080p picture of the criminal( That's why you figure out who they are and publish it on social media/other sources.
  - cooper_ganglia 3y ago
    PimEyes.com is reverse image search using facial recognition. There’s a chance you could identify them using a service like this. I’ve found the names of random people in the backgrounds of my photos this way. It’s a bit hit-or-miss, but when it works, it’s like magic!
- wepple 3y ago
  I don’t know that they’d have the skill or patience for this. If you’re running cables to other rooms, they’re not going to start tracing wires everywhere (to potentially find the wire connected to a router anyhow)
  - chatmasta 3y ago
    Why bother with that if you can just cut the mains power to the house...
- contravariant 3y ago
  Why were we trying to get them on camera again? Just sound the alarm already!
mschuster91 3y ago
Accessible wires are a perfect intrusion point. Blast 6 kV from a modified defibrillator and you'll fry everything that doesn't have lightning strike-grade arrestors - most ESD protection circuits are only capable of dealing with dead shorts and static electricity coming from people walking over carpets. Basically, if you want to burglarize a building with a decent protection system, simultaneously employ WiFi and mobile phone jammers, attach a high-voltage generator to the phone and power line and fry everything attached, then enter and ransack the building. If you're lucky, the alarm system will be so damaged that not even the sirens will sound, and as you cut the phone line and jam mobile backup, the alarm system can't alarm anyone either. The worst thing is, you can get all of what's needed here for a few hundred bucks on the Internet or make it yourself.
- k8svet 3y ago
  Fascinating. "Accessible" here seems to mean, "physically connected to the mains"? Further, I was sitting here typing "surely a wifi jammer is more accessible", but if modifying a defibrillator is easy, maybe it really is even more theater than I thought. Of course, in the real world, some of these mitigations will be a deterrent. But point taken, for a dedicated attacker/target, you're going to have to get more creative.
  - mschuster91 3y ago
    > "Accessible" here seems to mean, "physically connected to the mains"? Accessible as in "physically accessible to an intruder". In Germany's urban areas, it's more difficult as we tend to bury power and phone lines, but on the countryside, it's bare power wires and trivially openable jumper boxes for the phone lines. For a house, you'll have a lot of different entry points to run destructive power attacks as well: outdoors sockets or lighting fixtures, cameras, wifi APs, solar cells, basically everything that can be reached without a larger ladder should be considered an entry point for a determined attacker. > Further, I was sitting here typing "surely a wifi jammer is more accessible", but if modifying a defibrillator is easy, maybe it really is even more theater than I thought. it's easy from a pure technical viewpoint but incredibly dangerous. A defibrillator dispenses >300 joules worth of energy in a matter of milliseconds, that's around the same order of magnitude as a 9mm pistol bullet - this is also the reason why automated defibrillators will warn you to not touch the person while it dispenses energy: it's enough to send a healthy person into serious cardiac problems. And if you're messing around with the mains power supply wires, typically these are fused for hundreds of amps. If you manage to touch an exposed wire, you die. That's why these kinds of attacks aren't commonplace, because a burglar will simply go for the neighbor that doesn't have an alarm system installed... but once everyone has upped their game, the burglars will as well. In Germany, for example, bank robbers escalated to ATMs... they pump ATMs full of explosive gas, blow it (and with it, often enough the building...) up and take the cash that's flying around, then drive off in a high-speed car [1]. In some cases, the power of the explosion is bad enough to threaten the structural integrity of the building [2]. [1] https://www.tagesschau.de/investigativ/report-mainz/geldautomaten-sprengung-106.html https://www.tagesschau.de/investigativ/report-mainz/geldauto... [2] https://www.zeit.de/news/2022-06/18/nach-geldautomatensprengung-gebaeude-einsturzgefaehrdet https://www.zeit.de/news/2022-06/18/nach-geldautomatenspreng...
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

If I were guarding against this, I'd run wires. Everything else feels like a band-aid attempt. I love WiFi, but I hate WiFi.

by k8svet 3y ago

If I were guarding against this, I'd run wires. Everything else feels like a band-aid attempt. I love WiFi, but I hate WiFi.

chatmasta 3y ago

I would run wires too, but you're just shifting the problem. Now someone can cut the power, rip the camera out of its socket, follow the wires to the hard drives, and take them with the rest of their loot.

micromacrofoot 3y ago
Ideally you'd have hardwired cameras with a battery backup that store to local drives with a cloud backup. This requires significantly more upfront and ongoing costs... and most criminals aren't sophisticated enough to cut power or jam wifi. Lots of times they won't even wear masks. The average property crime is still an opportunistic smash and grab. Stick up wifi cameras are an affordable "good enough" for most cases.
hwbehrens 3y ago
The weak point is always the network connection. My cameras are PoE backed with a UPS, and the footage is replicated locally and to the cloud, but that replication still requires a network connection (which is also on battery). So, if someone jammed the cell network, cut my wired uplink, and then removed every drive they found, they can successfully prevent me from seeing them. I'll still know that something is happening, I guess? Plus they can always just wear masks. The real point here is, even if you capture a super-clear 1080p picture of the criminal(s) face, the police mostly won't care. It's just a little security theater that you put on for yourself, and sometimes your insurance company.
- pixl97 3y ago
  > if you capture a super-clear 1080p picture of the criminal( That's why you figure out who they are and publish it on social media/other sources.
- cooper_ganglia 3y ago
  PimEyes.com is reverse image search using facial recognition. There’s a chance you could identify them using a service like this. I’ve found the names of random people in the backgrounds of my photos this way. It’s a bit hit-or-miss, but when it works, it’s like magic!
wepple 3y ago
I don’t know that they’d have the skill or patience for this. If you’re running cables to other rooms, they’re not going to start tracing wires everywhere (to potentially find the wire connected to a router anyhow)
- chatmasta 3y ago
  Why bother with that if you can just cut the mains power to the house...
contravariant 3y ago
Why were we trying to get them on camera again? Just sound the alarm already!

mschuster91 3y ago

Accessible wires are a perfect intrusion point. Blast 6 kV from a modified defibrillator and you'll fry everything that doesn't have lightning strike-grade arrestors - most ESD protection circuits are only capable of dealing with dead shorts and static electricity coming from people walking over carpets. Basically, if you want to burglarize a building with a decent protection system, simultaneously employ WiFi and mobile phone jammers, attach a high-voltage generator to the phone and power line and fry everything attached, then enter and ransack the building. If you're lucky, the alarm system will be so damaged that not even the sirens will sound, and as you cut the phone line and jam mobile backup, the alarm system can't alarm anyone either. The worst thing is, you can get all of what's needed here for a few hundred bucks on the Internet or make it yourself.

k8svet 3y ago
Fascinating. "Accessible" here seems to mean, "physically connected to the mains"? Further, I was sitting here typing "surely a wifi jammer is more accessible", but if modifying a defibrillator is easy, maybe it really is even more theater than I thought. Of course, in the real world, some of these mitigations will be a deterrent. But point taken, for a dedicated attacker/target, you're going to have to get more creative.
- mschuster91 3y ago
  > "Accessible" here seems to mean, "physically connected to the mains"? Accessible as in "physically accessible to an intruder". In Germany's urban areas, it's more difficult as we tend to bury power and phone lines, but on the countryside, it's bare power wires and trivially openable jumper boxes for the phone lines. For a house, you'll have a lot of different entry points to run destructive power attacks as well: outdoors sockets or lighting fixtures, cameras, wifi APs, solar cells, basically everything that can be reached without a larger ladder should be considered an entry point for a determined attacker. > Further, I was sitting here typing "surely a wifi jammer is more accessible", but if modifying a defibrillator is easy, maybe it really is even more theater than I thought. it's easy from a pure technical viewpoint but incredibly dangerous. A defibrillator dispenses >300 joules worth of energy in a matter of milliseconds, that's around the same order of magnitude as a 9mm pistol bullet - this is also the reason why automated defibrillators will warn you to not touch the person while it dispenses energy: it's enough to send a healthy person into serious cardiac problems. And if you're messing around with the mains power supply wires, typically these are fused for hundreds of amps. If you manage to touch an exposed wire, you die. That's why these kinds of attacks aren't commonplace, because a burglar will simply go for the neighbor that doesn't have an alarm system installed... but once everyone has upped their game, the burglars will as well. In Germany, for example, bank robbers escalated to ATMs... they pump ATMs full of explosive gas, blow it (and with it, often enough the building...) up and take the cash that's flying around, then drive off in a high-speed car [1]. In some cases, the power of the explosion is bad enough to threaten the structural integrity of the building [2]. [1] https://www.tagesschau.de/investigativ/report-mainz/geldautomaten-sprengung-106.html https://www.tagesschau.de/investigativ/report-mainz/geldauto... [2] https://www.zeit.de/news/2022-06/18/nach-geldautomatensprengung-gebaeude-einsturzgefaehrdet https://www.zeit.de/news/2022-06/18/nach-geldautomatenspreng...

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]