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Security Cameras Can Tell Burglars When You're Not Home, Study Shows (cnn.com) 119

schwit1 shares a report from CNN: Some popular home security cameras could allow would-be burglars to work out when you've left the building, according to a study published Monday. Researchers found they could tell if someone was in, and even what they were doing in the home, just by looking at data uploaded by the camera and without monitoring the video footage itself. The international study was carried out by researchers from Queen Mary University of London (QMUL) and the Chinese Academy of Science, using data provided by a large Chinese manufacturer of Internet Protocol (IP) security cameras. Cameras like these allow users to monitor their homes remotely via a video feed on the internet, but the researchers say the traffic generated by the devices can reveal privacy-compromising information.

Study author Gareth Tyson from QMUL told CNN that data uploads of the unencrypted data increase when a camera is recording something moving, so an attacker could tell if the camera was uploading footage of someone in motion, and even different types of motion like running or sitting. The risk is that "someone who is specifically targeting an individual household rocks up outside with a device to try and start passively monitoring traffic," he said. Tyson told CNN that an attacker would require a decent level of technical knowledge to monitor the data themselves, but there is a chance that someone could develop a program that does so and sell it online. Noting that he hasn't seen any direct evidence of this kind of attack taking place, he said one potential use would be if someone wanted to burgle your house.
Tyson says companies could randomly inject data into their systems to make it harder for attackers to spot a pattern.

The study has been published at the IEEE International Conference on Computer Communications.
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Security Cameras Can Tell Burglars When You're Not Home, Study Shows

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  • Yeah, sadly (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Traffic analysis, so far as we know, is only practically defeatable by using constant time operations for everything or backfilling anything you do with noise.

    It's costly. Welcome to the future, fuckfaces. You wanted this surveillance state..

    • Re:Yeah, sadly (Score:4, Interesting)

      by logicnazi ( 169418 ) <gerdesNO@SPAMinvariant.org> on Tuesday July 07, 2020 @10:41PM (#60273920) Homepage

      In this case you can defeat traffic-analysis by the low-tech mechanism of buying a dog or even a roomba to move around in the house while you are gone.

      • Re:Yeah, sadly (Score:4, Insightful)

        by Aristos Mazer ( 181252 ) on Tuesday July 07, 2020 @10:51PM (#60273962)
        You can also defeat this kind of traffic analysis by not using wireless. Security cameras that are broadcasting over the air are the problem here. Sure, someone could do traffic analysis on your actual Internet connection line, but that takes a lot more access to pull off than just sitting outside a home looking for wi-fi activity.
        • True but bribing a low-level ISP employee to fork over access to this type of data is often trivial, especially if you already know some of them personally. You think disgruntled bottom-tier techs at a company like AT&T have pride, honor, or accountability? Think again.

          • I don't think most criminals with such access are going to bother with physically robbing a house, so I don't think that's a thing worth defending against. The ones that can get a fork of your data will be doing some more attacks along the lines of identity theft or phishing.
            • From first hand experience, I know you're wrong. They will pull no punches whatsoever. The ones not interested in violating you or your property physically will just sell on the data on to ones that are.

          • The great thing about this idea is that you can have a list of 10,000 houses and choose the four best ones for tonight. Especially if you can link IP addresses with home addresses and Facebook profiles via the ISP's advertising system, you can get really good targeting of people who have gone away for the week leaving their homes empty. WiFi is not the problem, distributed internet cameras are.
            • by cusco ( 717999 )

              People are overthinking this, by a lot. They don't become thieves because they're intelligent and ambitious, they become thieves because they're stupid and lazy. The principle reason why crime is a problem is because the police are only slightly smarter and slightly more ambitious.

              Want a much easier and fool-proof way to tell if someone is home? Throw a rock through a window and then hide near the limit of where you can view the house from.

              Tyson says companies could randomly inject data into their systems to make it harder for attackers to spot a pattern.

              This is one of the dumber things that I've seen on SlashDot this

              • My impression is that it works like Truecrypt, in concealing the actual file size of the data by using random noise in the unused space on the disk.

                If the cameras are only broadcasting when an event is being generated, then data sent at random intervals that mimicked the h.264 stream would help mask a pattern of activity. This is opposed to just leaving the cameras broadcasting and congesting the network.

              • People are overthinking this, by a lot. They don't become thieves because they're intelligent and ambitious, they become thieves because they're stupid and lazy. The principle reason why crime is a problem is because the police are only slightly smarter and slightly more ambitious.

                Want a much easier and fool-proof way to tell if someone is home? Throw a rock through a window and then hide near the limit of where you can view the house from.

                Well, you are assuming that is true because the people that get caught are stupid. Most of the others are doing white collar crime that nobody ever even realises happens. In this case, though, the thing is that one criminal can run it as a service for other criminals.

                Tyson says companies could randomly inject data into their systems to make it harder for attackers to spot a pattern.

                This is one of the dumber things that I've seen on SlashDot this week, and I browse at -1. The cameras are broadcasting because they're sending data to a recorder. Inject random data into a video stream and you've fucked your recordings up, at which point you may as well not have a camera any more. I suspect the writer of this foolishness just recently learned how MPEG4 recording works.

                The idea is that you inject data alongside but separate from the MPEG4 stream. Since it's all within a singe encrypted connection the people watching your connection wouldn't be able to tell the difference between that and activity in the hou

                • by cusco ( 717999 )

                  Now you're talking about needing to have the same manufacturer at both ends of the data stream, so that the camera knows how to add the random data and the recorder at the other end knowing which packets to reject. Sure as hell manufacturers aren't going to come up with a standard for injecting random bits into the data stream, and if they did then an attacker would be able to analyze it and know as well.

                  If you were a junkie or a teenager or a gangbanger are you going to hire a service to tell you when peo

          • by mysidia ( 191772 )

            True but bribing a low-level ISP employee to fork over access to this type of data is often trivial,

            It might be trivial, but you would actually need to bribe a high-level ISP worker in order to get a specialized data tap going, since the camera usage is going to be a stat that ISPs won't typically have monitored sufficiently for the evil usage. Low-level ISP employees, support/field techs, etc, generally won't have a way to get access to any kind of detailed info about a specific customer's traffic;

        • This is exactly what I was thinking.

          Wireless seems like a bad idea for security devices for other reasons as well.

        • I look for the good man. I would be your Mistress!! Punish me! =>> http://bit.do/fGrhU [bit.do]
      • Dunno if that works - won't those be dog bits or roomba bits, anyway? Must be different from "my house is empty" bits.

      • Just have Carbonite (or a similar tool) running and backing up your home server. Plenty of data packets.
      • My dog doesn't need to defeat traffic analysis. She'll just scare the fuck out of the would-be intruder. Also, "buying a dog"? What are you, Paris Hilton?
      • You never owned a dog. :-)

        Most dogs go into hibernation mode when no one is home. That way they have TONS of energy to spazz around when you get home.

        The rest of the dogs are destroying your couch when you're out.

    • by vlad30 ( 44644 )
      Or a system that has its storage securely inside the house, Why does it have to be "in the cloud" oh so the company can charge you a monthly fee and be another point of failure
      • by vlad30 ( 44644 )
        and don't use wireless
      • by Bert64 ( 520050 )

        A number of reasons...

        Remote access - a lot of home users are behind NAT, and often don't have control over the gateway - it may be impossible, or require additional configuration for them to connect directly from wherever they might be located. Where embedded devices like security cameras are directly accessible from the internet, they are often insecure and become a security risk in their own right.

        Offsite storage - if someone has broken into your premises they could steal or destroy the onsite copy of th

        • by CBravo ( 35450 )

          > Remote access - a lot of home users are behind NAT, and often don't have control over the gateway
          VPN. Should be easier to setup though.

          >Offsite storage - if someone has broken into your premises they could steal or destroy the onsite copy of the data
          If they know where it is. Smart burglars hide their faces anyway.

          • by Bert64 ( 520050 )

            VPN is more difficult than it needs to be for users...

            Increasing numbers of users are stuck behind CGN so they're not able to setup a VPN at all, and many providers still drag their feet on IPv6.

    • by Kisai ( 213879 )

      Yeah, however this is fundamentally a problem based on inadeqete security.

      Want to know if people are inside the house, whip out your WiFi stick, start scanning for data going to the same SSID. If the traffic is flat, nobody is home, or they're smart enough to not use WiFi.

      • If the traffic is flat, nobody is home, or they're smart enough to not use WiFi.

        Who doesn't have a home SSID that their phone automatically switches data to from the 4G network so they don't use up their monthly allotment of precious wireless bits?

        • by CBravo ( 35450 )

          I have trouble using my monthly 5GB bundle... It seems my phone is using less battery by only using mobile data.

  • by Solandri ( 704621 ) on Tuesday July 07, 2020 @10:13PM (#60273852)
    If you want to access stuff on your LAN from the Internet, it shouldn't be broadcasting to the Internet. You should set up a VPN server on your home router (most high-end and some mid-tier routers support this). When you're outside the house, you then connect to that VPN, and you'll have access to all the stuff on your LAN as if you were at home. Nobody else can see the traffic on your LAN without hacking your VPN. This is true not only for security cameras, but all of these Internet of Things devices.

    But people are too lazy / not knowledgeable enough to set up a VPN server. So they take the easy way out and use the manufacturer-provided shortcut of broadcasting their LAN traffic to the Internet. Exposing them to all sorts of hacks and privacy breaches like in TFA.
    • Wtf are talking about VPN wonâ(TM)t do anything when they are listening for workers transmission.
      • Worker? You mean this worker?

        "This is Worker speaking."

        "Hello Ah-Clem. What function can I perform for you?"

        That's a Siri easter egg!

        • Worker? You mean this worker?
          "This is Worker speaking."
          "Hello Ah-Clem. What function can I perform for you?"
          That's a Siri easter egg!

          Why does the Porridge Bird lay his egg in the air?

          Read Unhappy MACNAM!

          Excuse me, donâ(TM)t excuse me; you are making/not making the Doctor Unhappy/Happy!

          Could you state that as a question, please?

          Will Mr. AhClem please report to the Hospitality Shelter Immejitally, thsnk you!

          Read me Doctor Memory???

          Direct Readout, Doctor Memory....

          MMMMMmmmmmmmm.......

    • Except in the case of video to deter/catch thieves, it would be really nice if the thief didn't walk away with the only copy of the video when they steal your electronics.

    • by Aristos Mazer ( 181252 ) on Tuesday July 07, 2020 @10:47PM (#60273944)
      This doesn't help if they are listening to your device broadcast on your local wi-fi to your router. It only helps if your IoT device is connected by physical wire to the router. But, if you've done that, then letting the manufacturer broadcast the info to you isn't a problem, unless they're physically sitting on your connection watching for packets.
      • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

        Ignoring the improbability of a burglar sitting there with a laptop, long range wifi antenna and Kali Linux trying to determine if you are home or not I wouldn't recommend wifi for cameras anyway.

        You need to power the camera somehow anyway so PoE is the way to go.

        • Most burglars I have, ahem, come to have an acquaintance with, would rather be busting down your door then sitting w any electronic gizmo. If someone happens to be home, well, that's what the stolen handgun is for. Until he happens to meet someone with a legal handgun and better aim...
          • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

            You know some right idiots. Most burglars around here prefer to just opportunistically rob places that seem to be empty or where someone forgot to shut the door. The last thing they want is a dangerous encounter with the owner.

            • Given how well the UK protects criminals, I have to wonder why any home invader would fear an encounter with the owner. It isn't as if a homeowner has anything more than a butter knife to legally defend themselves with.

              Leaving the house for a bit? Better tie up the dog, because you could be held criminally liable if it bites a robber. [dailymail.co.uk]

              • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

                You can use anything up to and including deadly force if you can justify it.

                • "if you can justify it" [bbc.com] being the key phrase, in the eyes of the state that holds such contempt for its own lawful citizens that it treats them worse than the actual criminals.

                  • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

                    He did justify it and was cleared.

                    https://www.independent.co.uk/... [independent.co.uk]

                    • On the one hand a traumatized pensioner, and the other a dead home invader with a known criminal history. Obviously in the UK police state the answer is to arrest the pensioner under suspicion of murder until proven innocent. That's the point, not whether or not the pensioner was eventually cleared at perhaps great legal expense.

                      How long do you suppose until the UK bans kitchen knives entirely?

          • by cusco ( 717999 )

            As I posted above, they don't become thieves because they're smart and ambitious, but because they're lazy and stupid. Smart and ambitious people make a frack of a lot money doing real jobs than 99% of the thieves out there ever will.

        • Eh, my cameras send a constant video stream to my CCTV server (Zoneminder), so there's always data moving. This would not be a good detection approach for somebody simply monitoring camera wifi traffic in my case.
    • ^^^ This

      The article makes assumptions that folks are using:

      1) Cloud connected cameras
      2) Said cameras are only recording during motion triggered events

      If you don't bother with " Cloud " connected crap, then you don't need to worry about upload bandwidth as everything will be contained within your own local network. Put a big drive on a local server ( say . . . . 10TB or bigger ) and you can run several cameras 24/7 and hold enough footage for a few weeks to a month or more ( depending on how big said driv

      • by vux984 ( 928602 )

        Sure I'll tell my mom what you said to do. I'm sure she'll get it up and running no problem on her own; and she'll stay on top of maintenance, updates, deal with any hardware failures, and monitoring it too. i mean she doesn't know what a TB, ACL or VLAN is, but she'll figure it out.

        Look, I agree with you, and I even have home servers, managed switches, pfsense routers, an openvpn server with 2FA; ACLs, and firewall rules... But I do not want to be setting that up and maintaining it for all my family member

        • Not only did my mom create the VPN connection, she also put the end point in a DMZ which requires a one time pad code to ssh to an unknown port that only opens after knocking on a set of other ports also determined by one time pad, which then puts her at an "inner dmz" from which she can now establish a second vpn over the first vpn over ssh to the internal vpn and then login from there with MFA to the server that holds her encrypted videos.

          If your mom did anything less than what my mom set up in about 45 m

          • by cusco ( 717999 )

            My niece's network-fu is on a par with his mom's, but on the other hand she can take a paragraph scrawled by a lawyer during a 3-martini lunch and turn it into a morass of legalese that would take a month to sort out in court. We recommended a wired analog camera DVR for her, which worked quite well.

          • by vux984 ( 928602 )

            "Your mom's network fu is weak!"

            That was pretty much my point. Most people don't have any network fu.

      • Yep, this is my exact setup. All CCTV related devices (and the server) are contained within their own VLAN without any sort of Internet access. The only way to access anything on this network is to either 1.) be connected to the "secure" VLAN on my internal network, or 2.) VPN into my network from the outside.
    • by Bert64 ( 520050 )

      Many ISPs, especially in developing countries put all their users behind CGN... It's simply not possible to setup a VPN server.

    • If you want to access stuff on your LAN from the Internet, it shouldn't be broadcasting to the Internet.

      Er what? That’s like saying If you want to safely drive on the highway with your car, you shouldn’t drive out of your garage.

      You should set up a VPN server on your home router (most high-end and some mid-tier routers support this

      And how the does a VPN help exactly? The problem is that when you’re not at home, the video feeds will require less bandwidth as video is often compressed to be able to be sent. With modern compression like H264, less data is required when the image does not change frame over frame. Anyone monitoring your internet connection will be able to tell the amount of upload

    • by cusco ( 717999 )

      I used to participate in the LinkedIn forums for video security until they got too depressing. At least once a week an installer would ask, "How can my customer monitor their camera from outside their network?" The first dozen answers were always variations on, "Put it outside the firewall and set up DDNS." (Several of the security camera companies offer free DDNS service for their cameras.) Mind you these answers weren't coming just from the bozos who set up home security systems or mom-and-pop stores,

  • Amazon Cloud Cams are even more helpful in this regard. They flash a bright light to help burglars know that their jammer is working properly.

    • by Aristos Mazer ( 181252 ) on Tuesday July 07, 2020 @10:54PM (#60273966)
      Anyone serious about security knows to buy at least a mile radius of land around their home and clear cut it so it is obvious if anyone is approaching, and to not have windows visible across that distance. That hides those flashing lights, prevents monitoring of the wi-fi signal, and prevents zombie surprises. Most people are just such amateurs at this stuff.
      • Anyone serious about security knows to buy at least a mile radius of land around their home and clear cut it so it is obvious if anyone is approaching, and to not have windows visible across that distance. That hides those flashing lights, prevents monitoring of the wi-fi signal, and prevents zombie surprises. Most people are just such amateurs at this stuff.

        You forgot the no trespassing signs, razor wire and feral hogs between that fence and the next fence.

        Inside that fence? Rottweilers.

        • Anyone serious about security knows to buy at least a mile radius of land around their home and clear cut it so it is obvious if anyone is approaching, and to not have windows visible across that distance. That hides those flashing lights, prevents monitoring of the wi-fi signal, and prevents zombie surprises. Most people are just such amateurs at this stuff.

          You forgot the no trespassing signs, razor wire and feral hogs between that fence and the next fence.

          Inside that fence? Rottweilers.

          I rather enjoy my minefield and automated turrets myself. Nothing like exploding bipeds being converted into large chunks of meat to discourage trespassing.

        • And make sure and put the claymores at the base of the wire. Facing out correctly, of course.
        • by necro81 ( 917438 )

          Anyone serious about security knows to buy at least a mile radius of land around their home and clear cut it so it is obvious if anyone is approaching, and to not have windows visible across that distance. That hides those flashing lights, prevents monitoring of the wi-fi signal, and prevents zombie surprises. Most people are just such amateurs at this stuff.

          You forgot the no trespassing signs, razor wire and feral hogs between that fence and the next fence.

          And you forgot about the dogs with bees in thei [youtube.com]

      • Anyone serious about security has security personnel on site 24/7.
        • Bah. People are weak. They can be bribed or blackmailed. They get tired, sick, or just grumpy. And they expect to be paid! Far better to just go full-on automated termination system -- one such that if you ever leave your own home, you're never getting back into it. Keys?! Off switches?! Those are just security holes waiting to be abused! :-)
          • by cusco ( 717999 )

            This was state of the art in perimeter patrol vehicles five years ago. Newer ones from Academi and Dyncorp feature auto-aiming belt fed machine guns managed by human-motion detection cameras (and much wider track bases). I believe Shell has deployed them in Nigeria. It still takes a human to press the 'Fire' button, but that's just a software edit to remove.

            https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]

        • by cusco ( 717999 )

          You haven't worked with many security personnel, I take it. The average Securitas or Prosegur security guard has that job because they're not smart enough or hard working enough to get a better-paying job at an Amazon warehouse. The 10% of them who aren't dumb and lazy use their down time to study something that will get them out of that dead-end job and leave the profession fairly quickly. It really is one step above,or maybe to the side of, working at Taco Hell.

      • by Shotgun ( 30919 )

        Anyone serious about security moves into a neighbored with retired neighbors, takes them treats on a regular basis, and listens while they talk about their kids. Crooks don't stand a chance under the resulting surveillance.

    • by cusco ( 717999 )

      I believe that can be disabled in the camera settings. If not you can always just use a piece of black tape over the LED.

  • by sectokia ( 3999401 ) on Tuesday July 07, 2020 @10:39PM (#60273912)
    Kids and drug addicts Firstly they donâ(TM)t care about camera, as they donâ(TM)t care that much about being caught Secondly they are stupid The only point of home security is to make your neighbours house look like it would be better/easier to rob than your house.
    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward

      There's the money shot!

      Like a lot of people I've had a break-in or two, they were in, they stole a few notes laying on the kitchen table, some cheap jewellry and a tablet. Hell, the cost of repairing the broken window they climbed in through was about 4 times what they stole, covered by insurance so my premiums went up. They left a laptop on the desk, they ignored the consoles and even the DSLR camera. Speaking with the attending officer, burglers don't care about high price items as they're a pain in the a

    • Dumb addicts don't care enough to get greedy, but there are many thieves who after their first success only get smarter and more effective each time. They do it, because for them the drug is the theft. They get high on the thrill. When they find a new trick on how to get around security then they're all over it.

      So, no, they're not mostly idiots. They are some really nasty ones, who you just haven't met yet. Be glad, but don't be dumb yourself and think you'd be safe. Once you have them in your neighbourhood

      • by cusco ( 717999 )

        If they're smart they're still not going to steal the expensive stuff (except drugs, which you're not going to report stolen). Police will not bother to spend any time on something that's not a felony, and in most states in the US that designation doesn't start until at least $1000. That's why they'll almost never bother with online credit card fraud, even though you give them the receipts with the address stuff was delivered to, each purchase is a separate crime and unless one of them rises to felony lev

  • by logicnazi ( 169418 ) <gerdesNO@SPAMinvariant.org> on Tuesday July 07, 2020 @10:40PM (#60273914) Homepage

    For most individuals, this isn't anything that should concern them. Remember, the name of the game in home security isn't to make it impossible to steal your shit (you won't stop a government black bag team) but to render it sufficiently difficult that the attackers don't bother. This is why normal locks are perfectly good security as are windows despite the former being pickable and the later breakable.

    Ultimately, if you were a smart enough criminal to pull off this attack but yet still dumb enough to be robbing houses rather than engaging in harder to trace and more lucrative criminal activity (bitcoin theft, ransomware) which would you prefer to do? Sit outside a signal house monitoring it's wifi signal and filtering out the video surveillance traffic to determine when they aren't home and then break in *knowing* you are breaking into a house which will catch you on video (and likely be equipped with an alarm as well) or would you sit in a car with tinted windows and case a neighborhood for a day or two and then rob the house where you *saw* all the house members leave and seems unequipped with any hi-tech monitoring gadgets?

    • Ohh, yah and after you go through all the work to analyze the traffic for the place you plan to rob you don't really know if low traffic means they're away or simply not in the area covered by the camera or if a shirt was tossed over the camera. If you see high traffic you don't know if they are home or it's their roomba or Fido moving around.

      So when it comes down to it you gotta case the place the old fashioned way anyway.

      ---
      Damn't single house not signal house...

  • Unless you're targeting a specific place with a high-value return, this seems like way more trouble than it's worth. Doing this to break into Joe Random's place is probably going to be a waste of time.

    • Unless you're targeting a specific place with a high-value return, this seems like way more trouble than it's worth. Doing this to break into Joe Random's place is probably going to be a waste of time.

      That place is likely to have its cameras wired anyway. If you are powering the camera using POE you have to be a complete and utter idiot not to use it for data as well. From that point onwards the attacker does not have access to the traffic to analyse it for volume.

      • That place is likely to have its cameras wired anyway. If you are powering the camera using POE you have to be a complete and utter idiot not to use it for data as well.

        Exactly. All my cameras are wired with one exception, and I doubt anyone is going to get much data out of that camera- that's pointed at a seldom-used back door.

        And yes, anyone that uses PoE for power and not also for data is an idiot.

  • by bloodhawk ( 813939 ) on Tuesday July 07, 2020 @10:57PM (#60273980)
    If the burglar has the skills and knowledge to pull this off you are already fucked anyway. besides which if they have the skills and access and no issues with crime there are far easier and safer ways for them to make money.
    • by Dunbal ( 464142 ) *
      Yep. The serious burglar is coming in no matter what you do. Security only discourages kids, punks and amateurs. But sometimes that's enough.
      • yep, cameras are a deterrent to ward off the lower class of criminals. To that end my parents put up fake cameras in their store for a lot of years, cost them bugger all but reduced theft by 90%+
        • by cusco ( 717999 )

          That can be problematic, a local mall had fake cameras in their parking garage. An employee walking to her car after closing was raped in the garage and managed to sue the mall because the fake cameras raised an "expectation of safety". (Apparently the jurors and defense lawyer were too stupid to realize that there is never actually a person sitting and staring at every camera 24x7.)

      • by Shotgun ( 30919 )

        My dad was fond of the phrase, "Locks only stop the honest thieves."

  • Never leave my mom's basement. Not sure I could fit out the door if I wanted to
  • Randomly injecting? (Score:5, Informative)

    by Bert64 ( 520050 ) <bert AT slashdot DOT firenzee DOT com> on Wednesday July 08, 2020 @01:37AM (#60274256) Homepage

    Randomly injecting data is just going to waste bandwidth...

    I always thought the idea of wireless security cameras a pretty stupid one... Not only can someone nearby easily monitor the traffic in this way, they can also jam the signal when they want to break in, resulting in their actions not being recorded.
    Also the bandwidth on wireless is finite, by streaming 1080p video 24/7 (or random noise) you are hogging that bandwidth for yourself and denying your neighbors use of it.
    On the other hand if you use wired, the traffic is local to your house and cannot be monitored or cut without getting close enough to attack the wires - and if you've placed the cameras correctly you will catch a brief glimpse of the attacker right before they cut the cable.

    If your cameras are streaming events to a server offsite, the attacker would need to disrupt the internet connection in order to prevent that. Quite possible, especially with fixed lines where telecoms cables are often marked and can easily be cut.
    If the data is being stored locally, the attacker has to find the recorder in order to steal/destroy it. If the cabling is structured and goes under floors etc, the location of the recording device might not be obvious and could cause the attacker to waste significant time trying to locate it, or fail to locate it at all.

    Personally i have several cameras which use POE, connected back to a central switch in the house which is trunked to another switch in the garage. The garage contains several nondescript servers which are quite large and heavy, one of which stores recordings from the cameras. Assuming a burglar realised what these were, they would have to also break into the garage and probably destroy the disks.

    • by Anonymous Coward

      Your cameras should watch each other from progressively protected locations. Make them run a gauntlet of cameras, on camera.

    • by cusco ( 717999 )

      Our NVR is an ancient cast-off laptop sitting in a storage cabinet with the power and NIC wires running into the back. The power and HD LEDs have black tape over them, so it just looks like an ancient abandoned POS that no one would want to steal. I think there are some old COMPTia books piled on top of it currently too. Overhead for recording is very low, I think it normally runs about 5-8% CPU usage, and there's plenty of storage for half a dozen cameras with a week's retention.

  • What’s the difference of getting close to your house and listening for noise coming from inside? It’s even much more effective - since you don’t need to bring you laptop and try to grab the correct WiFi signal. BTW - the solution is plug your camera to a Ethernet cable. Or upload the content on the cloud at random time. Come on - guys this is ridiculously obvious... science should be something different from making noise on the web with news like this one.
  • Almost everyone carries a phone nowadays and they all connect to their home WiFi. By simply monitoring the number of unique clients connected to a residential WiFi, you can predict with almost certainty when nobody is home. No need for fancy camera traffic analysis, just count unique MAC addresses.

    • by ledow ( 319597 )

      There's any number of ways, and I highly doubt burglars are using any of them.

      Just ring the doorbell. If nobody answers, chances are the house is empty or the occupiers are not an immediate threat.

      And if someone does answer. "Oh, look, sorry you're not Mr Smith at 46? I've misread the house number on this parcel I'm delivering, sorry to disturb you."

      No burglar is sitting there hacking into your cameras to see if you're home, unless it's a high-level, highly-targeted, high-value robbery of someone very pa

      • by Shotgun ( 30919 )

        Had a guy walking around our neighborhood ringing doorbells. My retired neighbor saw what he was up to, and the guy feigned that he was trying to find out what time it was. My neighbor told him that if he didn't get out of the neighborhood, he'd clean his clock.

        Know your neighbors. Be nice to them. Clean guns together on the front porch.

    • If they have WiFi cameras they have other IoT stuff... doesn't tell you much if there's 17 devices or 19.
      • Not so. 17 vs. 19 can be very telling, as you're not looking for a blip, but a period of time where the graph is around 17 vs. around 19. If you have a router which can show you graphs of number of clients over time, take a look at it over 24hrs, you will likely be able to pick out when the home was empty. Additionally, from experience at my own home and a couple of other homes (family members who asked me to manage their networks), I can tell you that when people leave the house, usually more than just the

  • Old story, happens time and again.

    • by cusco ( 717999 )

      IMAPSP (Physical Security Professional). You would be shocked to find out how often in medium to large companies that their worst security vulnerability is their physical security system. As late as 2013 the AMAG system (one of the top five vendors in the business) would only install on MSDE or SQL 2000 without service packs. Really. There are quite literally systems out there running Windows NT 4.0 with no service packs which only get rebooted once every four or five years.

      IT staff hate to maintain one

  • Aren't there easier ways to figure out if someone is home? Like, watch the house and see if anyone is home. Look for a car in the driveway. See if mail/newspaper is piling up (or not being delivered at all). Ring the doorbell/knock and run to see if anyone answers. Call the police to the house and see if anyone is there.

    I get that this is a potential way to see if the camera is being triggered to record, which could provide information about motion in the house. But if you're looking for a lack of data pa

  • Unlike my sister who also has Blink, I leave my cameras armed 24/7 - even if I am home. I want to know if someone is on my property. It also helps let me know if a single letter was delivered, or a package that I am antsy to collect.

    Therefore, I don't think this is a problem for me as I'm sending the same traffic over the wifi. Wondering if I misunderstood or if my allegation is correct.
  • Our vacuum robots and our wet-wipe robots deliver upload content for free.
    Ditto the damn dog and the cats. They run out and back in the house 24/7, the bastards.

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