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[Alex Atkin UK]

On the VLC. What settings do you change? I can only get an old version (3.0.2) of VLC to work to view them. I change the Demux from Automatic to either H.265 or H264 and it works. But on newer versions of VLC it doesn't work for me. Do you change any other settings?

From the VLC forums I've noticed when viewing CCTV playback it seems to be hit and miss for many people. Some versions work for some people while others work for other people. I'm sure there is a setting I'm missing to make it work on a newer version of VLC.

AFAIK the only setting is I have hardware decoding disabled, as I use VLC to take stills.
I just have a shortcut eg

Code: [Select]

vlc --cr-average=10000 --network-caching=500 rtsp://guest:Password0@cctv.lan:554/Streaming/Channels/101/

[Edinburgh_lad]

https://news.sky.com/story/amp/perth-and-kinross-council-stops-buying-chinese-manufactured-surveillance-cameras-after-security-risk-warning-12822810

[Alex Atkin UK]

https://news.sky.com/story/amp/perth-and-kinross-council-stops-buying-chinese-manufactured-surveillance-cameras-after-security-risk-warning-12822810

For starters, people being "concerned" does not mean there is necessarily anything to be concerned about.  Their devices can barely do their intended job due to crap software, its more likely there is some major security bug from outdated software than a deliberate backdoor IMO.

Secondly, they're welcome to watch Amazon deliveries at the front door and birds in the back garden.  I don't think that's going to be much use to the Chinese government.

I very rarely see it pop up on the routers ARP table (I have real-time traffic monitoring) so I'm pretty sure China isn't snooping on me.  Maybe its a conspiracy given my router came from Aliexpress.

As for anything government related, I'm more alarmed that there isn't a government entity that has to assess the security of anything that is going to used by councils/government.

I also love how articles like this always make a point to say "Communist Party" rather than "Chinese Government", making their prejudices clear.

[Chrysalis]

Smart camera I brought to monitor when I am not home, I now use to look outside the front through window when am home so can see who is at front door.

Great cheap purchase.

I also have a fake outside camera as a deterrent.

[Bowdon]

One of the annoyances I find with a lot of cameras on the market is 1. most want a live internet connection, and 2. most only offer cloud storage.

It can take a while to find one that has local storage, and can operate without connecting to the Internet.

[Chrysalis]

One of the annoyances I find with a lot of cameras on the market is 1. most want a live internet connection, and 2. most only offer cloud storage.

It can take a while to find one that has local storage, and can operate without connecting to the Internet.

Is a problem with smart devices in general, they advertised as WIFI which is misleading as they are usually internet devices, with WIFI just the means of connecting to the internet.

For localised ones its best to look for bluetooth or ones that come with a hub, they both usually more expensive than the WIFI/internet one's.

My camera is a cloud (WIFI) camera, but I am able to use an SD card in it.  Although the app tries to push the cloud storage on to me.

[Edinburgh_lad]

Fresh from the newsroom about Hikvision

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-65975446.amp

[Alex Atkin UK]

Fresh from the newsroom about Hikvision

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-65975446.amp

You can't attack a device that is not accessible from the web.  If they're already on my LAN I have bigger problems.

[j0hn]

Panorama could not run the camera on a BBC network for security reasons - so it was put on a test network where there is no firewall and little protection.

The camera Panorama tested contains a vulnerability discovered in 2017. IPVM's director Conor Healy describes this as "a back door that Hikvision built into its own products."

Hikvision says its devices were not deliberately programmed with this flaw and it points out that it released a firmware update to address it almost immediately after it was made aware of the issue

So they are talking about a 6 year old bug that was fixed via firmware almost immediately, that was done on a network with no firewall at all.

All my surveillance cameras are Chinese, including a Hikvision. Fantastic piece of kit and great value for money.

[Alex Atkin UK]

So they are talking about a 6 year old bug that was fixed via firmware almost immediately, that was done on a network with no firewall at all.

All my surveillance cameras are Chinese, including a Hikvision. Fantastic piece of kit and great value for money.

Yeah it got me that they were testing in literally the worst scenario.  Surely a properly configured CCTV system would be its own VLAN isolated from the rest of the network?  In my own system the cameras are on the DVR and only the DVR is visible from the LAN, I have to login to the DVR and activate port forwarding to get into the cameras directly.

Its really basic security to only have sensitive devices on a network that the people allowed to access them have access to.  You can't really blame the vendor for the customers bad security practices of not updating firmware and putting them on an insecure network.

[craigski]

We now know that the camera was in fact supplied by, and compromised with the collaboration of IPVM, an organisation with a vendetta against Hikvision.

https://www.hikvision.com/content/dam/hikvision/uk/marketing-portal/catalogues/Letter-to-partners-BBC-Broadcast-26.06.23.pdf

[meritez]

Yes a door bell and a tannoy system

[Bowdon]

https://www.hikvision.com/content/dam/hikvision/uk/marketing-portal/catalogues/Letter-to-partners-BBC-Broadcast-26.06.23.pdf

Thanks for the link. I have my system closed off from direct access to the Internet. It's a dumb device on the network. I've seen too many cameras hacked and had the owners privacy breached.