[HN Gopher] Wi-Fi jamming to knock out cameras suspected in nine...
___________________________________________________________________
Wi-Fi jamming to knock out cameras suspected in nine Minnesota
burglaries
Author : LastNevadan
Score : 190 points
Date : 2024-02-13 17:18 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.tomshardware.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.tomshardware.com)
| rolph wrote:
| dont rely on cameras.
|
| one of my favorite moves, is to deposit, carbon or marking chalk,
| on the sill where tha sash covers it. window entry means you get
| it all over everything, and maybe leave prints.
| perihelions wrote:
| Where do you live that you have the experience to choose a
| _favorite_ anti-home-burglar technique?
| rolph wrote:
| Alaska, the other thing is that not only are police hours
| away, but anything you have to do like shopping, is at least
| hours away, and if you have electricity , its unreliable
| unless you go off grid.
|
| old school methods, and a distinctive character to alaskan
| criminality, help finding those responsible
| iancmceachern wrote:
| My favorite anti burglar move is to have dogs.
|
| They make more mess than the chalk thing, but they're way
| softer and more fun.
| r2_pilot wrote:
| Even more fun; I have a dog who likes to rest his head on the
| window sill, so if I combined the two methods, the mess would
| be indescribable!
| ct0 wrote:
| My neighbor has Guineafowls which will tell the entire
| neighborhood something isnt right. they also lay eggs a bit
| smaller than a chickens egg. I presume its not possible in a
| first world city though.
| wiml wrote:
| My city (Seattle) allows up to three fowl or certain kinds
| of livestock even in the fairly dense residential areas
| (the law is left over from many years ago, but backyard
| hens have become kinda fashionable in recent decades). But
| you can't keep a rooster, because it's too noisy. I suspect
| that keeping watch-fowl would have the same problem,
| neighbors would file noise complaints against you.
| autoexec wrote:
| I've heard that dogs aren't a great way to deter people from
| breaking in. I'm not entirely convinced about that though. I
| imagine many people would be put off by dogs especially the
| larger ones (this guy agrees
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DtwD-c9hn58)
| iancmceachern wrote:
| Where did you hear that?
|
| It's also highly dependent on the dog. A chihuahua maybe
| not so much, a big Rottie maybe yes.
|
| It seems like a weird thing to generalize. It's like saying
| "people are good or not good at fighting". Well, which
| people fighting how?
| autoexec wrote:
| Mainly stories from people who were caught so perhaps not
| the best sample. (like this one: https://www.kgw.com/arti
| cle/news/investigations/86-burglars-...)
|
| Dogs aren't always a deal breaker for criminals,
| especially little dogs (which tend to be the loudest).
| Barking dogs can even be a signal that owners aren't home
| to shut them up. The idea that neighbors or police are
| going to investigate a barking dog and catch a bad guy is
| very optimistic thinking. Kind of like how people just
| ignore car alarms even while being annoyed by them.
| iancmceachern wrote:
| A quick Google search says the opposite, statistically
| significantly so.
| BobaFloutist wrote:
| "Alright, perp seems to be wearing 10.5 Nikes. Put out a bolo
| on any adult male wearing size 10.5 Nikes."
| rolph wrote:
| ...with very specific wear, and scuff patterning, ie a
| shoeprint, in colour
| edm0nd wrote:
| a firearm is way better imo. you can prevent AND permanently
| solve the problem from happening again both at the same time.
| olyjohn wrote:
| If the guy is in your house, and you're in a position to
| shoot him, you have not prevented the problem. The problem
| has already happened.
| EricE wrote:
| If there are enough people ready to shoot then people are
| far less likely to enter in the first place.
|
| And before you say deterrence doesn't work, just put a sign
| outside proudly proclaiming your residence to be a gun free
| zone. Go for it!
| hellotomyrars wrote:
| I don't have a fundamental problem with private
| possession of firearms and in fact own one but boy is
| this not the "Solution" to any problem and I think it's a
| terrible look for responsible gun ownership.
|
| If I put that sign in front of my house, nothing would
| happen. The implication that somehow I would suddenly be
| robbed left and right I don't think holds that much water
| to begin with but especially doesn't make sense in many
| places people live, like a small town like mine. Just
| going to confuse the neighbors.
| autoexec wrote:
| On the other hand, guns are high on the list of things
| criminals like to steal. A sign saying that you have one
| in the home could get your home broken into for that
| reason.
| edm0nd wrote:
| They are breaking into your home to steal your things or
| harm you, being armed with a firearm prevents that from
| happening.
|
| If they still continue to break in after seeing you are
| armed with a firearm, you can just simply just shoot them
| once they get inside as your life was in danger and you
| also solve that from ever happening again from that person.
| EricE wrote:
| Wireless anything related to security is pretty dumb. Wired is
| better!
| AnarchismIsCool wrote:
| Truth.
|
| Wired and wireless systems are not all that different in terms
| of what they transmit at this point, but wired systems have the
| advantage of keeping their communication stream isolated in the
| wire as opposed to the shared EM spectrum. It's essentially
| another layer of security. Can someone tap the wire? Sure, but
| it requires extreme physical proximity that an RF attack does
| not.
| iancmceachern wrote:
| This is the way.
|
| When I design factory automation systems or surgical robots
| it's all wired.
|
| Anything mission critical needs to be, or the mission is not
| critical.
| tehlike wrote:
| I guess wearing mask is a good way to circumvent that too.
| AshamedCaptain wrote:
| What prevents the same thief from just cutting your "wired"
| fiber/DSL/whatever? Or the power, for what is worth.
| saintfire wrote:
| Holding/bringing a device that disables every camera is
| significantly different and less risky than climbing up on
| ladders cutting each cable going to each camera.
|
| As for cutting power? UPS/battery backup. That's defeatable
| too. At some point you have to say you've reached your limit.
| Generally you just have to be more secure than comparable
| targets, though.
|
| Someone using WiFi jamming on poorly thought out security is
| looking for easy targets, not complicated heists.
| AshamedCaptain wrote:
| I disagree. Possession of a jamming device is illegal in
| many jurisdictions. Wirecutters are not.
|
| I could kill all data communication in most buildings out
| there just by sneezing in the wrong cabinet (personally
| experienced). And then what are your wired cameras going to
| do? If the answer is "make loud noises", well, that's
| pretty much exactly what wireless cameras could also do.
|
| There's a reason 'professional' alarms generally prefer
| wireless connection and battery power (and loss of
| connection is generally an alarm-raising event).
| tehlike wrote:
| You can wear a mask.
| BobaFloutist wrote:
| Do Wi-Fi cameras not revert to normal cameras when jammed? I
| guess they have little to no onboard storage?
| 15155 wrote:
| Some have microSD media, most probably do not.
| jerf wrote:
| Who needs onboard storage? As is well known [1], among other
| things, the network is reliable, latency is zero, bandwidth is
| infinite, and the network is secure, so there's no reason to
| incur the extra costs of onboard storage.
|
| [1]:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fallacies_of_distributed_compu...
| joe_the_user wrote:
| It's easy to imagine devices that wouldn't be subject to this.
| They'd have storage and wired connections. A central server
| would send an alarm if it lost contact with the cameras for a
| time.
|
| But naturally anything like this wouldn't exist in default
| consumer land.
| itishappy wrote:
| > But naturally anything like this wouldn't exist in default
| consumer land.
|
| Wired cameras hooked up with power over ethernet has been
| around almost as long as I have!
|
| https://www.amazon.com/s?k=PoE+security+system
| gnicholas wrote:
| I picked cameras that have this for this reason. But if someone
| knocks out the wifi from a distance and then gets closer and
| destroys/steals the cameras, I'm SOL. My neighbors probably
| have cameras though, so it could be a bit trickier to get away
| without being seen at all.
| k8svet wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| > 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| Why bother with that if you can just cut the mains power
| to the house...
| mschuster91 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| > "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/geldauto...
|
| [2] https://www.zeit.de/news/2022-06/18/nach-
| geldautomatenspreng...
| hellotomyrars wrote:
| Many are SD-optional. Personally I would (and have) never
| deployed one without local storage. It just doesn't make sense,
| but having seen people with some of the lowest end devices, it
| is rarely even mentioned even when they do have a microSD slot.
| jerlam wrote:
| Even when they do have onboard storage, it's de-emphasized
| because they want to sell cloud subscriptions and storage.
| withinboredom wrote:
| I remember the days before wifi routers came with randomized
| passwords. We walked around with a backpack that connected to
| open wifi, logged into the admin page with the default
| credentials, and changed the wifi name/password and the admin
| password.
|
| We were evil kids and possibly part of the reason there are
| randomized passwords now.
|
| Anyway, this is basically the same attack, just with a B&E and a
| lot more temporary. I'm actually most surprised that these
| devices don't appear to do any buffering when a connection is
| lost. And even then, the internet will not stay active if the
| thieves just go to the neighborhood junction box and pull the
| plug on the house.
|
| :sigh: too much reliance on technology...
| mmcgaha wrote:
| Security has never been a concern for consumer devices. When I
| was a kid the local telecable remotes worked on all of the
| boxes in my neighborhood. I used to sneak up to people's
| windows and changing their channel. I bet my dad wondered where
| his remote was.
| withinboredom wrote:
| My neighbor and I moved in the same week and happened to buy
| the exact same doorbell unit. Every time someone rang the
| doorbell at either of our houses, the doorbell in the other
| house would ding too. It took us several weeks before we
| realized we were both answering the door every time someone
| came to one of our doors.
|
| It was an easy fix, but hilarious.
| myself248 wrote:
| A friend of mine had a telescope in his upstairs room, the
| window of which overlooked a lake with several other houses
| in view across the lake.
|
| 1: Get the other house's TV sighted in the eyepiece.
|
| 2: Move your eye out of the way and hold the remote control
| up to the eyepiece.
|
| 3: ...
|
| 4: Move back and observe the confusion.
| jvanderbot wrote:
| I am so skeptical of this story but I want it to be true so
| badly.
|
| If I shine a laser through, does it really focus on the
| sighted spot? Does the coating on the telescope not filter
| IR? I thought most did maybe not. Could I shine a
| flashlight through and illuminate the room? How is that not
| the same?
| freeone3000 wrote:
| 1. Optics are symmetric, so it will _shine_ on the spot
| with the same total power, which might not be noticable.
|
| 2. Maybe! Cheap ones might not even have a coating.
|
| 3. You can do this! See (1) for how much brightness you
| can expect.
|
| If it worked, it's due to televisions having a relatively
| low activation threshold for user comfort, so you don't
| have to aim the remote accurately, or often at all! Often
| secondary or even tertiary (or more) IR reflections will
| trigger television functions. For a quick sample, try
| aiming your remote at the opposite wall and seeing if the
| tv turns on. I don't doubt this story, but I also believe
| it would have worked merely by pointing the remote at the
| TV, telescope or no.
| Xamayon wrote:
| For #2 - Assuming it's not a spotting scope or similar,
| filtering IR wouldn't have much benefit. An IR filter
| might even hurt for the typical star gazing type usage,
| depending on the equipment used. Cameras for looking at
| things in the night sky often explicitly lack IR filters
| (often at massively increased cost) to increase
| sensitivity to any available light.
| bluGill wrote:
| remotes are not lasers, since a laser would only worked
| if you point at the small ir receiver with high accuracy.
| Instead remotes are regular IR which is allowed to
| scatter.
| Arrath wrote:
| Okay that's ingenious. I love it.
| SmokeyHamster wrote:
| I remember that being the norm as early as about 15 years ago.
|
| Thus the reason behind the security mantra, "If it's not secure
| by default, then it's not secure".
|
| Because normies know very little, if anything, about IT
| security. And to be fair, they shouldn't have to. When you buy
| a house or a car, how often do you take time to examine the
| mechanism in the door locks, and check to see how easy it is to
| pick them? Or do you rely on the locks generally being secure,
| albiet far from Fort Knox-grade.
| graemep wrote:
| That is true, BUT people are willing to learn about securing
| their cars and houses. They will take precautions. People do
| change their locks, buy security systems for their cars take
| care that they do not leave keys lying around. They are
| willing to make an effort to lock their doors, keep and eye
| on things. They will avoid buying things with weak security.
|
| When it comes to IT they expect someone else to do it. The
| problem is no one else cares about your security as much as
| you do.
| bluGill wrote:
| > check to see how easy it is to pick them
|
| Never, based on how easy some cheap locks are to pick.
| thimp wrote:
| There was a thing 2-3 years ago around me where you'd go in
| Mcdonalds and they had several SSIDs in there called MCD0NALDS
| MCDWIFI MCDOONALDS MCRONALDS etc. If you connected to any of
| them, the sign in page would Goatse you.
|
| I suspect it was a plug in ESP32 dongle or something hiding in
| the restaurant.
| TaylorAlexander wrote:
| I do miss the days of hacks that are primarily just there to
| mess with people.
| dylan604 wrote:
| A friend and I made a yagi antenna from a threaded rod, some
| nuts, and a Pringles can. We never really did anything with it,
| but it was interesting in the early days of who did/didn't have
| WiFi. The branch of the Fed put out some serious signal back
| then though. I remember passing it on the highway, and received
| more packets from it than from home networks from slower drives
| in local neighborhoods.
| thesuitonym wrote:
| I miss the days of open-by-default wifi. I remember my
| uncle's internet connection was provided by a coffee can
| taped to his window that he threaded his antenna through, and
| when I first moved out of my folks house, living close enough
| to neighbors who paid for me to torrent movies.
|
| Of course it's less useful now, even the cheap prepaid mobile
| phone plans will get you a usable internet connection.
| jtriangle wrote:
| I remember driving around, getting lost, then finding a
| neighborhood busting out my laptop and figuring out where I was
| via mapquest in order to get home many times.
|
| Also made sure to check my myspace. Never did anything
| particularly evil. Definitely downloaded some movies off Kazaa
| via my neighbor's wifi, because it was faster than my wifi.
|
| Realistically, if you're going to have wireless security gear,
| it needs to detect when it's being jammed and immediately sound
| the alarm. That's the only way it's even remotely viable. Just
| recording people stealing your stuff isn't enough.
| yieldcrv wrote:
| Backpack? I used to walk around with a Nintendo DS that had a
| mod running off of a microsd card
| AnarchismIsCool wrote:
| Been saying this for a while but the RF world is wildly under-
| explored on the consumer side. The military has been doing
| electronic warfare for ages but it's only now popping up in the
| consumer industry.
|
| An example: all wireless protocols can be trivially jammed by
| just spamming noise, like anything else, but most can also be
| smart jammed by various methods: spamming disconnect packets,
| malformed packets that crash the device, noise jamming very
| specific parts of various transactions, like the alignment
| section of OFDM QAM on 4/5G, etc. This means, instead of needing
| some multiple of the targets transmit power to cover a wide area,
| you can use as much or less power than the target which is
| extremely bad from an EW standpoint.
|
| We need to build smarter wireless protocols that can both resist
| casual assholes, but also higher sophistication adversaries up to
| and probably including nation state actors for the safety of our
| infrastructure.
|
| And yes, that means insulin pumps probably shouldn't have radios
| in them.
| SkyPuncher wrote:
| People don't do it because it's a quick way to land in hot
| water with the FCC.
|
| You don't want federal crimes because you jammed someone's wifi
| lazide wrote:
| Huh? Breaking into someone's house is already a felony pretty
| much everywhere.
|
| I think it's more likely just a bit harder to find a known
| good RF jammer than a rock. And a rock was usually fine. Or
| used to be, anyway.
| sidewndr46 wrote:
| Facebook tries to sell me RF jammers pretty much nonstop.
|
| Aliexpress sellers will happilly mail you whatever RF
| jammer you want.
| sidewndr46 wrote:
| Jamming 2.4 GHz spectrum is unlikely to ever warrant an FCC
| response.
|
| Virtually every microwave I've tested is an excellent jammer
| for 2.4 GHz. It even has a user interface for how long like
| you'd like to jam communications!
|
| I'm legally allowed to "jam" your WiFi so long as I am using
| the spectrum for communications because I am licensed user
| unlike the majority of 2.4 GHz users. Even if you file an FCC
| complaint they aren't going to do anything.
|
| Now if you move up to 5+ GHz range it really depends. If you
| start jamming the DFS bands it'll eventually get noticed.
| yardie wrote:
| Unless it's a very old microwave it should not be leaking
| RF into the surroundings because that RF is energy targeted
| at warming up food and liquids.
| sidewndr46 wrote:
| I bought my microwave in 2014. It was top of the line. I
| warm up a cup of water and I can watch every 2.4 GHz
| device drop off from my AP for that time period.
| leptons wrote:
| You have a defective microwave, you may want to get that
| checked out.
| pixl97 wrote:
| Hell, one of my customers had one of the best 2.4GHz
| jammers I'd ever seen at their house. It was one of those
| portable handsets for hardwired phones that were still
| common in the 2000s before everyone started ditching land
| lines.
|
| They had lots of complaints about the quality of wireless
| they had in their house. I dropped in more access points
| even after everything worked perfectly when I was there.
| Then they got a call when I was there and everything
| stopped working. This was before 5GHz was really common,
| but B/G/N would just stop functioning.
| thesuitonym wrote:
| I wasn't aware you could be licensed for 2.4 GHz
| broadcasts. What's the process on that, and what does it
| allow you to do? (Besides jamming others I guess)
| Aaronstotle wrote:
| How is the FCC going to know I jammed my neighbors wifi? This
| is a serious question, you can practically run any red light
| you want where I live without any repercussions.
|
| Is there an FCC overlord watching these signals?
| ronnier wrote:
| This is taken a lot more serious than running red lights,
| and yes, they will get you. A guy in Florida was using a
| jammer in his car to block phones when he was driving. They
| found it.
|
| https://www.pcmag.com/news/fla-man-fined-48k-for-jamming-
| cel...
| sidewndr46 wrote:
| That guy was not jamming WiFi
|
| Also he ran the jammer every day along a very specific
| route. It's like robbing the same liquor store 3 nights
| in a row. Eventually even the laziest cop just waits
| around back for you to show up.
| rolph wrote:
| https://www.fcc.gov/over-air-spectrum-observation-
| capabiliti...
|
| https://www.mdarc.org/regulations/fcc-monitoring-stations
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FcKCMfVJohI
| RobRivera wrote:
| FCC fines for jamming the spectrum are...nontrivial
| beardyw wrote:
| I think it can be done by sending de-authenticates. No signal
| jamming required.
| lazide wrote:
| FCC rules forbid hostile use of the frequencies, that's
| also what forbids jamming.
|
| Everyone is supposed to get along and play nicely, and
| jamming is the definition of not doing that.
|
| Intentionally sending disconnects/de-authentications too,
| if the intent is denying lawful use for someone.
| AnarchismIsCool wrote:
| I can assure you they don't give a shit. The FCC has been
| completely asleep at the wheel for a decade.
|
| Yeah if you rig up a 1kw tube amp and start splattering a big
| chunk of the FM boardcast band, jam their cash cow mobile
| networks or run around with a GPS jammer near an airport
| you'll get a near immediate PP slap but beyond that they'll
| _maybe_ send a car _eventually_. They don 't have the ability
| to detect and locate this stuff in real time and, IMO,
| probably shouldn't for privacy reasons.
| pierat wrote:
| For ISM, yeah the FCC don't give a shit.
|
| Marriott was jamming for years, until they were forced to
| stop. Keyword: years.
|
| If someone is making temporary jamming attacks (even on GPS
| or cell), unless you do it at your house or stationary, you
| ain't getting caught.
|
| I know 'a friend at the hackerspace' who did a .25w GPS
| spoof to make the city look like it was in Moscow, Russia.
| Nobody responded.
| syntheticcorp wrote:
| Specifically, Marriott was deauthing rather than just
| plain jamming.
| dylan604 wrote:
| I can assure you they will give a shit if you make enough,
| ahem, noise that people start complaining. Not that it's
| not fun to mess around though. Think about those little
| stickers that says your device _must_ accept all blah blah.
| You just have to be able to talk to them so they can.
| spr-alex wrote:
| Rest assured they do. If you look up FCC violations in
| urban areas you can find out that they are quite adept at
| triangulating violators.
|
| "A first offense is a misdemeanor punishable by up to a
| $10,000 fine and/or up to a year in jail. Subsequent
| offenses are felonies punishable by up to 2 years in
| prison. In practice, this might result in only a civil
| action by the FCC. But it is forbidden by Congress and can
| be punished by imprisonment."
| https://law.stackexchange.com/questions/94617/is-
| deliberate-....
| thegrim33 wrote:
| Criminals committing felonies usually don't really worry
| about FCC fines.
| tareqak wrote:
| The amount of Uber and Lyft drivers that have told me how
| cellular reception near sports stadiums are atrocious tells
| me that these FCC fines are not deterring those with
| sufficiently deep pockets.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| Different root cause - stadiums concentrate an absurd
| amount of people in a _very_ small space, and people aren
| 't going to a stadium to watch sports, they are there to
| make selfies, videos, even livestreams for Instagram,
| Snapchat or Tiktok so they need _a lot_ of bandwidth.
|
| Ideally, the operators of such venues would go and place an
| appropriate amount of picocells inside the stadium, but
| these cost a ton of money to install and they are only used
| maybe once a week for two hours, so there is no financial
| incentive for the providers (particularly if the general
| public has gotten so accustomed with a baseline of
| enshittification that they don't even protest any more).
|
| For example, take the Munich Oktoberfest. The
| Theresienwiese is 42ha large and fits about 600.000 people
| without tents or ~200.000 in the full Oktoberfest buildout
| - and each year, every provider literally spins up
| _hundreds_ of cells of all sizes, to accomodate the up to
| 20, 30 terabytes of data each day that all these people
| create [1]. But since that is two weeks of full load, it 's
| worth the effort in the end financially.
|
| [1] https://www.golem.de/news/netzabdeckung-mobilfunk-beim-
| oktob...
| bluGill wrote:
| AT&T has microcells in a box that you can get them to
| install for you large events and then return at the end
| of the event. You can even set who is allowed to connect
| so you can demonstrate your cell device works at a trade
| show while not having to deal with other cell phones.
|
| I don't know why they don't bring them to sporting events
| and then take them out at the end. Probably labor.
| kjs3 wrote:
| When I worked for Cingular Wireless pre-AT&T, we had
| everything from femtocells (the last 2 stalls in the
| bathroom don't have service) to full cell sites with
| their own power source on 18 wheelers they'd roll up for
| big events, and a dedicated team of engineers and techs
| to support it. It was a huge help, but at the end of the
| day bandwidth is still finite no matter how many cells
| you stick in and around the stadium.
| cenamus wrote:
| But that's clearly just because of 10s or 100s of thousands
| of mobile devices in the area, why would they care about
| that?
| sneak wrote:
| If you're caught jamming spectrum to disable security cameras
| to _invade someone's home and steal property_ , you're going
| to get more than fines.
|
| Kicking in doors is also illegal.
| traceroute66 wrote:
| > Been saying this for a while but the RF world is wildly
| under-explored on the consumer side.
|
| Not really, it is, but nobody gives a shit.
|
| Before zero-trust was the latest cool buzzword on the block,
| there was the Jericho Forum[1].
|
| I vividly recall attending a Jericho affiliated event where one
| speaker was banging on about how insecure those bluetooth phone
| dongles were.
|
| Nothing changes. Security remains an afterthought.
|
| But back to the topic at hand, security camera, home WiFi,
| asking for trouble really. There are some things for which you
| really should just run a damn cable.
|
| [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jericho_Forum
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| Why do you think there are so few attacks given the wide
| surface and long known vulnerabilities here? Maybe there are
| simply even lower hanging fruit to further your scam or
| espionage than intercepting these communications?
| bri3d wrote:
| Barrier to entry, mostly. Implementation of most RF attacks
| historically required expensive SDR equipment and strong
| knowledge in a highly specialized domain.
|
| Even many WiFi attacks which can be executed by off-the-
| shelf WiFi hardware require specialized driver/firmware
| hacking to execute, since most WiFi firmware isn't designed
| to send frames "out of turn" or with the wrong flags set.
|
| This is all evolving rapidly and I fully expect this to be
| one of the hottest topics in coming years. Flipper Zero is
| an obvious example of the change here - it was absolutely
| nothing new hardware or software wise, but providing easy
| access to standard BLE primitives and years-old sub-Ghz
| radio chipsets triggered a variety of meltdowns.
|
| More powerful SDRs and basic "building block" libraries for
| SDR are only becoming cheaper and more available every day.
| autoexec wrote:
| I suspect that there are many many attacks, but we don't
| hear much about them because they go undetected.
|
| People are routinely being tracked via bluetooth for
| example but very few people think about it or bother to
| disable bluetooth because of it. Companies (and anyone else
| interested) just get to scoop up all that data and use it
| for whatever they feel like.
| teeray wrote:
| We need to start wiring houses for this stuff. It's absurd that
| we don't treat data cabling as fundamental as plumbing at this
| point.
| jimt1234 wrote:
| I'm unsure, but my gut tells me there's regulations/building
| codes that require landline cabling in (new) residential
| homes, and of course, _not_ data cabling. Like I said, it 's
| just a hunch, though.
| lazide wrote:
| Building codes (a long time ago) also didn't require
| electrical wiring or plumbing, then we decided they should.
| sidewndr46 wrote:
| You're suggesting there is building code requiring the
| omission of data cabling. I'm not even sure how this would
| be phrased. Especially given that phone cabling is just
| Cat5 cable now.
|
| Data cabling is omitted from new builds because it doesn't
| sell homes and is just a cost.
|
| The only recent comparison I can think of is how some
| cities actually required lead pipes for drinking water for
| decades.
| autoexec wrote:
| > You're suggesting there is building code requiring the
| omission of data cabling
|
| I don't think so. I think he's suggesting that without a
| code that _does_ require it nobody is going to bother
| including it even though they really should.
| brewtide wrote:
| Worked for a res-electrician for about 6 years. We would
| often strongly suggest that people run cat5e (it was
| years back now) to many locations for future proofing
| layouts and connections in the house.
|
| Very very few people had interest in the slight added
| expense of the cable and labor to do as such -- all
| insisting that they only needed it to / from cable modem
| area to their aspirational wifi router location.
| HumblyTossed wrote:
| A lot of homes are at least partially wired. The "phone line"
| cable in homes built in the last decade or so is almost
| certainly cat 5.
| teeray wrote:
| This sounds like a great idea, until you try to re-
| terminate that cabling and see how much abuse the
| electrician put the drop through. I've seen 6-8" of
| sheathing removed and all the remaining pairs untwisted
| wrapped back around (or just snipped entirely).
| HumblyTossed wrote:
| I guess I got lucky then.
| hooverd wrote:
| Sparkies love yanking really hard on data cable. Dunno
| why.
| oogali wrote:
| You can remove the "data" qualifier -- they yank hard on
| any and all cable.
| dhosek wrote:
| In my pre-divorce house, it turned out that the flippers
| who had done the renovations on it did things like put
| phone and coax jacks in every room that were not
| connected to anything.1 Well, there were wires in the
| wall, but they just went deeper into the wall. In my
| current apartment, I put in about 50' of Cat6 since the
| 1920s construction walls kept the wifi signal from
| reaching from the living room where the fiber drop was to
| my office off the back of the kitchen. When I buy a house
| again, one of the first things I'll do is run ethernet
| through the whole place.
|
| [?]
|
| 1. The other irritating thing was discovering that the
| light switches were attached only to the faceplate which
| in turn was attached only to the drywall.
| dqv wrote:
| >When I buy a house again, one of the first things I'll
| do is run ethernet through the whole place.
|
| Good call. Although, I just had it done recently and I
| was pleasantly surprised at how noninvasive it was (the
| electricians worked really hard, so that's part of it).
| We moved things out of the way for where we wanted the
| jacks installed and they ran the cables through the wall
| with a minimal amount of holes. Definitely would have
| been even easier if we didn't have anything in the house
| at all, but there was way less ceremony on my part than I
| was expecting.
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| So many homes with a coax in every room too.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > We need to start wiring houses for this stuff.
|
| We already have. Powerline is a thing, and for smart home
| stuff you don't need high bandwidth.
| ryall wrote:
| I don't understand why powered IoT devices (lightbulbs,
| switches etc) don't use powerline for network access.
| sidpatil wrote:
| Some of the pre-IoT home automation system did use
| powerline for communication:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X10_(industry_standard)
| data-ottawa wrote:
| Would this be vulnerable to an adversary plugging a
| device into your exterior electrical outlets?
| plorg wrote:
| Back in the noughties plugging in a TV was enough to
| break some powerline ethernet.
| neilalexander wrote:
| > but most can also be smart jammed by various methods:
| spamming disconnect packets
|
| At the very least for this particular case, WPA3 mandates
| Protected Management Frames (PMF) to prevent de-auth attacks on
| Wi-Fi networks.
| samstave wrote:
| I have a devious idea:
|
| A device that looks like solar-powered garden lights, but it
| has a wifi jammer built inside, and you plant them outside
| businesses such as banks, in the perimeter of their buildings
| (banks _usually_ have large setbacks and include huge planter
| boxes (as bollards - see fed reserve SF that had to remodel the
| planter boxes because OWS folks were camping in them) to keep
| vehicles from ramming through doors
|
| But "jamming-bombs" might be really interesting.
|
| Is it illegal to spam noise on any frequency? Whats required?
| the SSID youre attempting to jam?
|
| If so, just scan for networks and pick one... then spam it with
| auth requests with a rotating table of MAC addresses/IMEIs
| etc...
| amiga-workbench wrote:
| I always wished that a lot of home automation stuff would use
| powerline networking. Especially things like the relays I have on
| my lamps.
|
| I guess an ESP8266 costs way less than all the chunky passives
| required to do powerline comms though.
| iancmceachern wrote:
| And for ethernet and PoE stuff the cost is all in the jack, it
| needs filtering and magnetics, etc to comply with the new fast
| standards making it usually one of the most expensive
| components on the board, often many dollars for the one
| component
| throwanem wrote:
| Powerline doesn't work across phases, which is in itself a huge
| pain with US split-phase service.
| Scoundreller wrote:
| I've _read_ that this can be solved with a couple capacitors
| to jump the phases. Just a high-pass filter. Could be an
| embedded in a 240v device if you want to avoid messing with
| household wiring.
| EricE wrote:
| Ubiquity had some power line equipment on a newer standard
| that was sensitive enough that for many homes there were
| enough cables running in parallel the signals would propagate
| between phases enough to work. Some other vendors still sell
| the tech - it's come a long way from X10 in the '70s!
|
| You also have plug in phase couplers that you can put
| wherever you have a 220v appliance like a dryer or range.
| Handy especially for older houses where running new cable can
| be a significant challenge.
| ianburrell wrote:
| Powerline networking is really noisy, the electrical wires are
| basically antennas. It may be easier to monitor and interfere
| with than wireless protocols.
|
| There are powerline home control protocols. X10 is the big one
| but it is old and flawed. UPB and PLCBUS are new ones but they
| are proprietary. Insteon is interesting one that can do
| wireless and powerline but recent products have dropped
| powerline.
|
| I think Matter is going to kill need for powerline. Matter goes
| over Wifi, Bluetooth, Thread, and Ethernet. Thread is low-power
| mesh like Zigbee, but should be able to use Wifi or Ethernet to
| bridge gaps.
| jeroenhd wrote:
| IEEE 1901 can't be jammed as easily, though. 500mbps half
| duplex may not be amazing compared to normal WiFi, but it's
| plenty for a bunch of security cameras and an IoT sensor or
| light bulb here or there.
|
| In every IoT scenario other than window and moisture sensors,
| you generally have access to a plug of some kind. I'm
| honestly surprised that HomePlug isn't built into IoT devices
| more often.
| pcdoodle wrote:
| Insteon is alive and does a great job of propagating over
| powerline and dual band versions even have a little radio for
| hopping across phases.
| vanburen wrote:
| Single pair Ethernet would be a great option for home
| automation.
|
| I think it is mostly used for industrial applications at the
| moment, but don't see why it cant be used in consumer
| applications as well
| lambdasquirrel wrote:
| I had this happen to me when I was being harassed, back when I
| lived in the Bay Area. RF security cameras are a bit useless.
| beaeglebeached wrote:
| Recovery rates from theft are abysmal and expected return likely
| lower than value of the cameras. Arrest rates are single digit at
| best.
|
| Burglary perps are primarily worried about a 9mm penetration to
| their skull by a $100 hi-point.
| itishappy wrote:
| I believe the goal is deterrence rather than forensics.
| Hopefully thieves will see your fancy security system and
| choose a different house.
| lazide wrote:
| The issue is when they see the sign, and that means they know
| that RF jammer tool they bought will work.
|
| If you're going to put up a security system sign, make sure
| it's for a system that works differently than the one you
| actually have.
| sky_rw wrote:
| It's also worth noting that you can buy signs and stickers
| on ebay for way less than the actual system, and you
| arguably get most of the benefit from the visual
| indicators.
| creer wrote:
| You are not deterring by having good video after the act!
| Your video camera recording or not is not relevant to
| deterrence.
| itishappy wrote:
| An excellent observation! If deterrence is the goal (and
| I'm suggesting it often is) then a fake camera is often
| just as good, but cheaper!
| n_plus_1_acc wrote:
| "They have an expensive camera so they have money"
| cooper_ganglia wrote:
| Actually true. "I don't have security cameras so I can catch
| burglars, I have security cameras so I can watch back the
| recording of me blowing them away!"
| lowbloodsugar wrote:
| So, NRA sticker?
| fururuuruu wrote:
| Seems like someone should make a wifi security cam that has
| several hours worth of internal storage to cache video when wifi
| is unavailable. Storage is cheap is hell. A 4GB micro-SD card
| adds like a dollar to the cost of a mass produced embedded system
| and could save a few frames per second for hours.
| FirmwareBurner wrote:
| _> Seems like someone should make a wifi security cam that has
| several hours worth of internal storage to cache video when
| wifi is unavailable. _
|
| That's exactly what the cheap wifi security cameras do. They
| capture the video on onboard microSD cards and wifi is only for
| viewing of that data. If you loose wifi, it will still record.
|
| Don't all cameras do that nowadays?
| mmcgaha wrote:
| Supplement your regular security cameras with some camo field
| cameras and you will have some hidden redundancy.
| jakewins wrote:
| Some car brands sell vehicles that open with a button push on the
| door, if the key is just nearby.
|
| Standard kit now is you get an RF extender that bridges the
| distance from a key inside someone's house to the car; then the
| car just lets you open it and drive it away. Much faster and
| simpler than the old slim Jim ways!
| ianschmitz wrote:
| The key needs to be continuously present for the car to
| continue running. Unless I'm missing something in your story?
| instaclay wrote:
| I have a push-button car made by Hyundai and one made by
| Nissan. Both can be turned on with the fob inside the
| vehicle. You can then leave the key behind and drive away.
|
| The dashboard will immediately warn you that a key is not
| present (audio and visual icons), but both cars will not do
| anything to immobilize the car after the key has been left.
| scintill76 wrote:
| AFAIK my '07 Mazda can drive away without the wireless key.
| It beeps to warn you when the key is getting out of range.
| adolph wrote:
| Signal from the key just needed to start, not a keep-alive.
| Might depend on make/model. Chances are good an automaker
| doesn't want to shut off a car at speed just because the key
| misses a keep-alive ping.
|
| _The device is actually two sets of equipment. When the
| unsuspecting victim parks and locks the car, a thief standing
| not far away holds the first device, which is used to pick up
| and amplify the electronic signal as it is sent between the
| car and the key fob._
|
| _That signal is relayed to a second device, which tricks the
| car into thinking that the key fob is near the car. That
| disarms the security system, unlocks the door and
| authenticates the engine to start._
|
| https://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-hy-mystery-car-
| steali...
| thepasswordis wrote:
| Not true for any car I've ever seen.
|
| once it's started and in drive the key isn't needed.
| lokar wrote:
| Mine works this way, you get a warning that it's going to
| shutdown in a few min without the key.
| kube-system wrote:
| I don't think _any_ car keyless ignition requires the key to
| be present to continue running. You don 't want a car to shut
| off on the highway if someone drops the key behind a metal
| object or the battery dies.
|
| If you start a car, and then take the key out of the vehicle,
| you will get a message like this:
| https://i.ytimg.com/vi/Jo6gzVfAElc/maxresdefault.jpg
|
| You will be able to drive the vehicle until it is put into
| park or shut off, and you won't be able to drive it again
| until the key is present again.
|
| This has stranded some people who have done the following:
|
| * start the car
|
| * get out for some reason
|
| * leave the key by accident
|
| * get back in the car and drive away
|
| * park at their destination
|
| * they are now stranded without a key
| NoPedantsThanks wrote:
| Even more surprising: fobs that don't work if the key is in
| the ignition.
|
| My 1996 Mustang had a bad battery, so it would barely
| start. I took the remote fob off the key ring and left the
| car running, but locked it (using the physical door-lock
| button). When I came back later, the fob would not open the
| door.
|
| WTF? Had to have another key brought from home.
|
| Another good one: If you open the back door of a Mini
| Clubman (or the regular Cooper, most likely) and then
| accidentally drop your fob into the car and close the rear
| doors or hatch... the car will re-lock itself and you're
| fucked. This is great when it's a hot day and you just put
| a dog in the car, which is in the sun. Now you get to break
| a window. Yay German engineering.
| babypuncher wrote:
| My car beeps whenever the key is not detected in the cabin
| while the vehicle is running. It would be very hard to
| leave the key behind by accident.
| jakewins wrote:
| What model vehicle stalls if it can't find the key? That
| seems like a severe safety problem - you mean it would brake
| if the battery dies on the key dongle?
|
| At least in the two Hyundai's I've owned with this type of
| system - an Ioniq hybrid and a Kona EV - it drives just fine
| once started even if you chuck the key out the window.
| thesuitonym wrote:
| The car turning off is not at all the same as braking. It
| actually seems LESS safe to me to allow the car to move far
| beyond the key, because leaving the key behind (Thus
| stranding yourself) is more likely to occur than the
| battery dying.
| dylan604 wrote:
| My first experience with owning a car that had the wireless
| key surprised me. I had a Toyota Tacoma that needed to be
| moved. Someone more freely available jumped in and was able
| to start it because I was fairly close. They drove around the
| block well out of range and it never stopped running.
|
| This was surprising to me. In a previous car, I had a remote
| start that would specifically kill the engine if you pressed
| the brake without the key in the right position. So the
| stopping the engine was something that I just assumed would
| happen as well. Unless there's a concern about just having
| the engine stop while actively being driven???
| WirelessGigabit wrote:
| Sadly no. I've driven to a place with my wife, and then she
| drove off, with me having the keys in my pocket.
|
| It'll keep running. Can you imagine if it stops detecting the
| keys because the coin-battery is dead and the car all of the
| sudden stalls?
|
| Only when you stop the car and then try to start it you'll
| notice.
| corytheboyd wrote:
| Damn that is clever, and something I hadn't even thought of
| before. Plenty of people get home and throw their keys by the
| door, this would absolutely work with a range extender. Does
| anyone know why keyless became the norm? Cheaper to manufacture
| than physical keys with electronic security features?
| jakewins wrote:
| My understanding is this is rapidly being replaced by NFC
| phone tapping, at least that's what Hyundai is swapping to.
|
| Annoying though, I've really enjoyed not having to dig
| through pockets to open the car :(
| corytheboyd wrote:
| Damn, that sounds so much worse. My Tacoma already has
| keyless for me to worry about, but at least that doesn't
| require an internet connection.
|
| I know that NFC itself does not require an internet
| connection, but the whole point of requiring a smartphone
| at all here is to have an app that millions of people MUST
| install, to collect data to sell. I won't at all be
| surprised when they arbitrarily lock NFC keyless behind a
| required internet connection.
|
| I'm tired boss.
| axus wrote:
| I'd compromise with hands-free door unlocking, but some
| harder method to start the engine.
| kramerger wrote:
| This has been going on for a while. It is surprisingly easy
| with some brands
|
| https://youtube.com/watch?v=hj3ZRv9cMBw
| WirelessGigabit wrote:
| And the fix for this is for the keys to go to sleep when not
| being moved for x minutes. I can put my keys next to my car and
| walk away. After x minutes I cannot open my car anymore unless
| I wiggle the keys.
|
| Example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hRhYFXVo6To
| piffey wrote:
| Seems easy to defeat. I shake your car to make the alarm go
| off, hide, wait for you to pick up your keys to disable the
| alarm when you see no one there, use RF extender while your
| keys are active to unlock and steal the car.
| Borealid wrote:
| No, the fix for an attack that extends the readable distance
| via a relay is to use timing information in the
| authentication process between the key and the car.
|
| Car: "please respond to challenge blah" Key: ENC(car-public-
| key, SIGN(blah)) Car: "too slow"
|
| Physics itself limits how quickly you can do a round-trip to
| a device that's a certain distance away. If the timeout for
| the operation is set near enough to those physical limits, a
| relay attack won't work.
| OtherShrezzing wrote:
| Even with that, this is a feature I'd be turning off. If your
| $75-125k car is vulnerable for 5 minutes per day at a
| predictable time and location, that's plenty of information
| for would be thieves.
|
| Keyless entry + keyless start means your vehicle could be
| gone before you've even got your shoes off after you get
| home.
| kjs3 wrote:
| There will be pushback because people leave their keys in the
| car. Hell, I probably know a dozen people who've told me "oh,
| I just leave the car keys in there". This is the kind of
| customer friction the car companies hate, so they likely
| won't do it, no matter if it's the 'right' answer.
| 7402 wrote:
| Standard kit is a $15 RFID blocker box from Amazon, to keep
| near front door and put car keys in.
| ijhuygft776 wrote:
| That's why I ran Ethernet cables and used PoE cameras. It's a
| pain to install but worth it.
| lokar wrote:
| Same, with the switch and nvr on a ups
| ijhuygft776 wrote:
| I skipped the NVR and just relied on the SD cards on-board
| each camera.... I was able to store almost 1 week of motion-
| activated footage, which was enough for me.
| graphe wrote:
| This gives me an easy solution idea. A few wired ESP32 in HA
| configured as a baysian sensor, if several or one goes offline
| someone's jamming or something is wrong.
|
| Wifi canaries.
| CodeWriter23 wrote:
| Use wires -\\_(tsu)_/-
| johnny99k wrote:
| it's pretty easy to do this. you can can just send deauth packets
| using a card that supports it. I tried it out on my ring cameras,
| which resulted in the camera being knocked offline temporarily.
| LZ2DMV wrote:
| You don't even need a card or a laptop. You can send deauth
| frames with an ESP8266, if the camera runs on 2.4 GHz, of
| course.
| ryukoposting wrote:
| > Minnesota doesn't generally have a reputation as a hotbed for
| technology
|
| I don't understand why Minnesota is catching strays for a problem
| that affects the entire country. The hot new tech is the problem
| here, not Mark Tyson's cute naive northerner strawmen.
|
| Companies like ADT hopped on the IoT bandwagon because it's
| cheaper and it gives the sheen of advanced technology. In
| reality, wireless security systems are far more vulnerable than
| their older, wired alternatives. You can jam them. They can
| simply drop connections on their own due to interference. Many of
| them rely on cloud services that introduce their own points of
| failure (that's not really Wi-Fi's fault, but with one form of
| bullshit usually comes the other).
|
| Edina is notorious in the Twin Cities because it's where the old
| money lives - it's immensely wealthy compared to almost
| everything surrounding it. 100% of the blame rests on the
| companies taking rich-person home security budgets, and using it
| to install low-end Wi-Fi cameras. The victims here could
| certainly afford a wired solution, and I'd hazard a bet that they
| paid enough that a wired system could have been installed.
| kiney wrote:
| I have a couple of security cameras around the house. Started
| with wifi cameras but switched to wired ethernet for the newer
| one because of unstable wifi and high latency... Looks like
| there's now one more reason that was the right choice.
| Havoc wrote:
| How do the crooks know that it is down though?
| kylehotchkiss wrote:
| 3M security film is a nice analog home security feature that
| should be used in addition to cameras
| NoMoreNicksLeft wrote:
| Wifi cameras are cheap junk. You still have to run a power line
| anyway... why not ethernet and PoE?
| adolph wrote:
| Many use photovoltaic and battery now:
| https://www.cnet.com/home/security/best-solar-powered-home-s...
| htrp wrote:
| Home security systems used to call out to the local response
| center using your existing phone line, you could jam the outbound
| call by tying up the phone line.
| dylan604 wrote:
| This has always been a concern I've had around WiFi anything in
| security systems. Sure, they're great for easy installing in an
| existing structure, but between jamming and battery replacement,
| I've just never been a fan. I'm also old and don't trust
| anything, so that just adds to it.
| Phrodo_00 wrote:
| There are wifi cameras that will store video locally when the
| wifi is out, although I can see it'd be a problem if they get
| stolen while the network is jammed and they don't have a chance
| to upload.
| silisili wrote:
| This is something Eufy can't make up their mind on. The
| doorbells and some cams transmit wirelessly to a base. Then
| they released new cams that do it locally and don't work with
| the base.
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| At the end of the day its security theater. Having a video of
| the crime won't prevent it or even lead to solving it most of
| the time. If you want actual response to active crime you are
| going to need someone who is paid to preferentially show up to
| your property and they should be in a guardhouse nearby.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Could be useful for insurance/liability purposes though. Same
| reason for a dashcam.
| dylan604 wrote:
| Sadly, you're not wrong as expecting a police officer to do
| anything with the footage is just a farcical notion. Which
| really makes me wonder what police were doing when they were
| requesting footage from Ring directly. We've been told
| directly by detectives that they are too busy to look at
| emails with evidence. There must be some other purpose for
| them wanting the footage other than solving crimes. I just
| don't know what it is
| quatrefoil wrote:
| Solving _different_ crimes. The ones you might get a
| promotion or some other gratification out of.
|
| If you're in a city with 1,000+ home burglaries a year,
| nobody cares that you clear one and arrest some meth head.
| But, solve some gruesome or politically-tinged crime and
| you're holding a press conference and getting praise left
| and right.
|
| We do the same thing as software engineers. Every large
| company has some lore about what types of work get you
| promoted, and many engineers prefer to work on that.
| bluGill wrote:
| What size is the city with 1000+ burglaries in a year?
| What is the value of the houses they target? If there are
| several million houses in the city than 1000 might be
| close enough to nothing to ignore. However if there are
| only 2000 houses in the city 1000 is half and enough to
| get attention - you bet the police care about solving at
| least some of them.
|
| Often the police know who the criminals in town are.
| However they lack evidence to prove anything. Thus a
| camera feed showing an already known criminal is enough
| to get their attention as while they might not care about
| you directly they criminal who hit you may have also hit
| a high importance target but they cannot prove it in
| court - thus convicting them of hitting you helps them
| for cases they cannot prove.
| neuralRiot wrote:
| > Solving different crimes. The ones you might get a
| promotion or some other gratification out of.
|
| Actually crime against persons (murder, assault, armed
| robbery) have higher priority than simple burglaries.
| Having your property taken away is infuriating but no one
| can argue that stoping a violent criminal is more
| important.
| creer wrote:
| This is probably the answer. And so how can we exploit
| that to get OUR case worked on? Involve the journalists
| sounds like one. Message your city hall people might be
| another. Take to twitter? What else? Offer a reward (thus
| getting more response from all the rest - not to claim
| the reward but to blab about it) What else?
| jibe wrote:
| Your detective in your city on that day may have been too
| busy, but that's just an anecdote, not a survey of the
| thousands of cities and police departments and their
| response to home burglary footage.
| skhunted wrote:
| The majority of murders go unsolved. The vast majority of
| rapes go unsolved. Police regularly don't even spend the
| money to process DNA samples. I'm not an expert on this
| topic but it seems to me that the police in big cities
| largely don't do their job.
| dylan604 wrote:
| > Your detective in your city on that day
|
| you must of have read over the "detectives"--pural--part
| of that sentence. I have had a burglary in one home, and
| then a few years later had a home invasion where the
| person was very obviously identified to the police. The
| responding officers were able to look him up, have a
| positive witness ID made, and then see that this was a
| "bad guy". No arrest made.
| mingus88 wrote:
| Regardless of that we all should have cameras running
| everywhere all the time
|
| It is only recent history that cell phone cameras have become
| ubiquitous and it has caused a huge shift in the authorities
| ability to squash their abusive behaviors
|
| In the same way that TV played a fundamental part of progress
| in the civil rights and Vietnam wars, one of the best tools
| the average person has to hold people accountable is to
| control the narrative via video
|
| My only concern is that gen AI will mean that nobody will
| ever trust video evidence again. I hope we get some kind of
| signature based crypto verification on recordings to prove
| they aren't fake. Like every device is keyed to authenticate
| the recordings it produces
| moate wrote:
| >> Regardless of that we all should have cameras running
| everywhere all the time
|
| I would like to opt out of this nightmarish safety
| hellscape. I never use the phrase Orwellian because it's so
| often misused, but yikes is this some 1984 badthink.
| Terr_ wrote:
| I think the distinction is who controls the tools.
| Everyone having their own cameras is very different from
| the party controlling cameras around everyone.
| lapetitejort wrote:
| Sometimes it's both, like in the case of Ring doorbell
| cameras. I may install a camera and think I'm in control,
| until my footage in the cloud is subpoenaed without my
| knowledge for an alleged crime I have nothing to do with.
| jrussino wrote:
| I went with a doorbell with local storage (Eufy, in my
| case) for this very reason.
|
| My knowledge of the law here is virtually nonexistent. It
| seems likely that I could still be subpoenaed to turn
| over footage under some circumstances. But at least I'm
| in control of that footage and it's not automatically
| being given to some third party.
| lcnPylGDnU4H9OF wrote:
| I held this same opinion until recently but I've come to
| realize that it only disallows citizens from recording in
| public -- that is, if this opinion were adopted in
| policy, the police could use said policy against me to
| prevent my filming of police activity.
|
| I'd also like to opt-out of having cameras everywhere in
| public but the fact of the matter is they are here to
| stay. Additionally, most of the cameras which capture
| your image in public are not cameras which you installed
| and they're not cameras which you have the authority to
| remove. Adding your own cameras to the mix is
| functionally equivalent to exercising your freedom to
| speak; really, to document, in this context.
| jrussino wrote:
| I don't know about _should_ , but given that cameras and
| microphones and processors and power and communication
| are all probably going to continue to get cheaper and
| smaller and lighter it seems to me that this is nearly
| inevitable. So the question really should be - how do we
| adapt to it? How can we try to mitigate the harm (through
| social, legal, and/or technical means) and steer our
| changing society closer to a future that we'd actually
| want to live in?
| brippalcharrid wrote:
| Cryptographically verified recordings don't sound practical
| to me (sensors and video processing electronics sound like
| a lot of hardware to put in a secure element), but I'm sure
| we will see generative AI inflating away the value of
| blackmail material soon; one mitigation for this could be
| cryptographically signing material and then publishing the
| signature long before it becomes practical to fake it (i.e.
| the past, increasingly), then periodically creating
| signatures with new algorithms in advance of the discovery
| of practical attacks on existing ones.
| luma wrote:
| The only thing that'd need to be in a secure element
| would be the signing keys. This has existed for a while
| for digital cameras. Canon, Nikon, and Sony have all
| brought still image solutions to market for use in
| situations like photojournalism or forensic evidence
| collection.
| brippalcharrid wrote:
| I don't think that the signer would be able to verify the
| authenticity of the data that it received from the sensor
| and image processing circuitry unless they were able to
| authenticate each other securely. I know that an attack
| on a system like you proposed would still be expensive,
| but it would become more attractive if its
| characteristics were overplayed (and would then be
| subject to legal challenge). Forensics, of course on the
| other hand is based on experts saying "yes, by all
| accounts this appears to have happened".
| munk-a wrote:
| Device signing can be used very effectively to tell if a
| particular devices was involved in an action - but it is
| far more difficult to tell if some non-specific device
| was the source or whether it was generated. When it comes
| to fabricated video evidence we'd need to establish a
| circle of trust that included every camera ever produced
| but was somehow secure and unforgeable. We've seen this
| approach break down previously with Diginotar[1] - it
| really only takes on weak link in the system to
| compromise the verification. At the scale with which
| cameras are demanded it seems unreasonable to expect a
| centralized signing administration to be able to keep
| their tokens all completely secured.
|
| 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DigiNotar
| exe34 wrote:
| Yes, and then governments will require that any sale of
| recording devices are registered so that footage can be
| traced back to.... undesirables who undermine the great
| leader.
| spoonjim wrote:
| Only if crime isn't punished. If it is, I.e. the video is
| used to track down the thief and put them in jail for 20
| years, it definitely stops the problem.
| dylan604 wrote:
| 20 years for burglary? Sheesh
| animex wrote:
| nah out the same-day and released on a plea or technicality
| as long as no-one was hurt and no weapons involved.
| jcrawfordor wrote:
| "video verification" by a monitoring center via cameras can
| greatly improve police response times, and private security
| companies are often specifically in the business of video
| verification systems. There isn't really a dichotomy here and
| cameras can be an important compliment to a security response
| arrangement.
|
| Increasingly, cameras are the way that security companies
| dispatch their guards. They are far more actionable than
| traditional intrusion alarms. Depending on the police
| department, alarm reports with video may be treated as crimes
| in progress while intrusion alarm activations alone are not.
|
| Unfortunately the technical standards around video
| verification are not widely implemented and so in practice it
| usually requires getting your intrusion alarm, surveillance,
| and security response all from the same vendor. There are
| common standards but the consumer security industry today is
| heavily organized around walled gardens and there isn't much
| adoption of the industry standards outside of commercial.
|
| In the commercial world these types of systems are often
| referred to as "pre-intrusion" since the monitoring center
| observes the cameras in realtime and, in theory, could
| dispatch guards to suspicious activity before any intrusion
| alarm would be triggered. In the consumer world, for cost and
| privacy reasons, the monitoring center usually only receives
| video after the activation of an intrusion alarm.
| makeitdouble wrote:
| To add to sister comments, solving a burglary is rarely
| tracking the thieves down in their agit and getting back the
| goods Hollywood style.
|
| What people expect:
|
| - triggering an alarm so the theives don't spend the night
| looking at every nook and cranny of the house
|
| - having proof that it was burglars and not the drunk
| neighboor forcing his way to the wrong house (if so, you'd
| also want proof of that though)
|
| - get the cops and insurance to be on board and have the
| incident processed swiftly. "solving" here basically means
| getting the insurance monney to buy the missing stuff.
| dylan604 wrote:
| > - having proof that it was burglars and not the drunk
| neighboor forcing his way to the wrong house (if so, you'd
| also want proof of that though)
|
| Especially if your neighbor is a cop that then shoots you
| while you're minding your own business in your own home.
| kobalsky wrote:
| I have the cameras to prevent surprises. If someone walks
| near my house I immediately get their picture on my phone
| and/or tv using home assistant with frigate.
| instagib wrote:
| Can always use dummy cameras with a led. First it started with
| the ADT signs and now people are putting up cameras. If your
| place has neither then you're a greater target.
|
| Generally they are in and out in a few minutes long before
| police or a security service can dispatch someone.
|
| My system has a large battery backup for an old lantern or
| something, recording, 4G fallback, is wired, and I regularly
| spend time outside.
|
| All of which is invalidated by people staking out a place and
| wearing a mask.
|
| I saw a burglar with almost all of my neighbors things and
| appliances. Thought they were moving or upgrading and waved.
| dylan604 wrote:
| > All of which is invalidated by people staking out a place
| and wearing a mask.
|
| My favorite part of the beginning of the pandemic was going
| to the bank in a hankerchief like an Old West bank robber.
| Just as effective today as back then...for hiding your
| identity just slightly better than Clark Kent taking off his
| glasses.
| Terr_ wrote:
| They also didn't do anything from a disease perspective
| either, unless it was a disease transmitted by large
| quantities of spittle.
| lolinder wrote:
| > I saw a burglar with almost all of my neighbors things and
| appliances. Thought they were moving or upgrading and waved.
|
| This brings up another point, which is that one of the best
| things you can do for your security is to be well known by
| your neighbors. If no one knows your appearance and habits
| then all kinds of crazy stuff can go down while you're away
| and your neighbors won't know anything's wrong.
| NoPedantsThanks wrote:
| People should by now have learned from all the footage on
| NextDoor of burglars ignoring obvious cameras. Mine are
| wired, but I'm not fooling myself that they're going to be
| all that useful if something happens.
|
| The other glaring flaw with cameras is that they always face
| perpendicular to the street, so even if the getaway car has
| plates you'll never get a shot of them. Not that the car
| isn't stolen anyway...
| silenced_trope wrote:
| > If your place has neither then you're a greater target.
|
| On the other hand, if a place has visible cameras and ADT
| signs, do they have valuables worthy of protection and worth
| the risk?
| masfuerte wrote:
| Yes. I saw an interview with a burglar in the UK. He said
| he preferred properties with alarms and other security
| features because they were much more likely to have
| valuables worth stealing. And, as he pointed out, nobody
| cares about an alarm going off in a city. It just gets
| ignored.
| lowbloodsugar wrote:
| $200 gets you a PoE camera. Solves your wifi and battery
| complaints with a single cable.
| dylan604 wrote:
| glibly ignoring the easy to install part.
| Scoundreller wrote:
| Obviously there's a market for alarms that sound off when it
| detects wifi or other frequency jamming.
| mattlondon wrote:
| I worried about this when installing 7 cameras on my home.
|
| For what it is worth, more recent nest cameras have battery
| backup and buffer up to an hour of video if the WiFi is out
| (https://store.google.com/gb/magazine/compare_cameras?hl=en-G...)
|
| So in theory if the perps cut the power you are ok, and if they
| jam the WiFi you are ok too.
|
| A month or two ago 3 guys actually did try to break in (without
| jamming) and the police took the videos but still weren't able to
| catch them. It gives me some.hope that perhaps one day maybe they
| do catch these guys and it serves as evidence.
|
| I now have the cameras hooked up to Home Assistant so if they
| detect a person (and not e.g. a fox) and we are out, a Raspberry
| Pi starts playing loud barking noises and a few lights turn on.
| During our breakin attempt, the guys were on their 7th (!)
| attempt at kicking in our front door and you can see from the
| videos that within literally a second of a light going on
| (...when we woke up) they turned and ran off so signs of life
| from the inside seems to be a strong deterrent.
| Jnr wrote:
| What is it good for if they knock out cameras from being able
| to report activity to a person? Video probably will not help
| catch the bad guys.
|
| I use cameras with ethernet and PoE, those are also cheaper
| than wifi. On the other side of the cable there is PoE
| injection, ethernet switch, recording and object detection
| server, all connected to a UPS battery. If power goes down, I
| still have cameras and network running for a few hours,
| notifying and alarming if anyone trespasses. When power goes
| down, I also get notification with snapshot of the incoming
| electricity box on the street, to know if it was local issue
| caused by a person, or something else.
| creer wrote:
| The point here is to send them to some other house before
| they actually get into yours. Not to catch them. To some
| extent, catching them means you were not dissuasive enough in
| the first place.
| dkn775 wrote:
| Can you give us a product list? I'd like to build a similar
| set up. What kind of cameras and what software are you
| running? Great setup
| creer wrote:
| In general plausible signs of life does sound like a good
| response. All the more so if they really make sense related to
| sensory input. In service of making the next home seem like an
| easier target than yours.
| giantg2 wrote:
| It mentions flooding wifi with traffic so real traffic can't get
| through. Do they have access to the network, or are they just
| blasting the target spectrum?
| adrianpike wrote:
| The ones I've seen usually just spam the spectrum with noise,
| since it's easiest and totally effective, and there's no need
| for them be sneaky or clever with their emissions since it's
| very very rare the victim would have a way to notice, and you
| don't need more than a few watts.
| vzaliva wrote:
| I use Wyze cameras with SD cards, so while WiFi will jam online
| monitoring, there will be a record of the bulgrary.
| plasticchris wrote:
| I've got to say, this is one great thing about remote work. No
| worries about my house security.
| dboreham wrote:
| Axis cameras are all wired-only.
| creer wrote:
| That seems logical - And how easy is it to (reliably) detect
| jamming to route that straight to an alarm?
| mass_and_energy wrote:
| This is why it's important to ensure your cameras have redundant
| flash storage using something like an SD card. In this way, you
| have local footage on the camera whether it's jammed or not. So
| they'd have to tear the cameras down too, which is much more
| invasive than a simple WiFi jammer.
| m000 wrote:
| Any tips for Bluetooth jamming to keep our beaches boombox-free?
| Asking for a friend.
| martinky24 wrote:
| Sounds like an excellent way to get a hefty fine from the FCC!
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