This New App Lets You Spy On People’s Insecure Bedroom Webcams

Chinese media have reported on a new app that allows users to access and browse through webcams whose default passwords haven’t been changed.

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This means that the subscribers, who only have to pay $28 for the app, can look into people’s shops, living rooms, bedrooms, children’s rooms and anywhere else that cameras have been installed.

It’s basically a catalogue of “hackable” webcams that have bad passwords or unchanged default passwords. And what’s even more shocking is that 200-400 new cams are being added every day. Here’s what one report said:

Lists of up to 200 to 400 compromised cameras and their login credentials are given away each day for free and downloaded by hundreds of people, CCTV reported.

The lists are given away for free, so as to market the software.

Eugene Aseev, vice-president of engineering at data protection firm Acronis, said that cameras are easy to hack as many of them have similar firmware:

Once there is a weakness or vulnerability found in this firmware, all these devices [will] start to share this weakness or vulnerability.

Once you have unpacked a brand new internet-connected piece of hardware, spend a little time playing with its configuration. Common default unchanged [passwords] on thousands of devices…is a primary flaw that is being leveraged by attackers.

It’s this fear of hacking that has led me to constantly covering my camera in a bit of Blu-Tack, but I guess that isn’t too helpful if you’ve installed the webcam for a reason. So basically, as Assev suggests, you should avoid using default device configurations, update your devices’ firmware frequently and always change the default IDs or passwords. Otherwise you might have some pervert watching you go about your daily business.