Google Exposes Web Surveillance Cams

An anonymous reader writes "Blogs and message forums buzzed this week with the discovery that a pair of simple Google searches permits access to well over 1,000 unprotected surveillance cameras around the world - apparently without their owners' knowledge." Apparently many of the cams are even aimable. Oops!

Comments

The question is

[cainskltn]

What is the search keyword.

Re:The question is

[Anonymous Coward]

inurl:/view/index.shtml

Re:The question is

[Anonymous Coward]

That might just have been the most disgusting i've ever seen.

Re:The question is

[Anonymous Coward]

see http://johnny.ihackstuff.com/ for the "Google Hacking Database" (seems to be down at the moment).

Re:The question is

[AstroDrabb]

Here is the webcam search URL:

inurl:"view/index.shtml"

Here is a list of others

Re:The question is

[Anonymous Coward]

Is it just me, or is half these cameras now slashdotted. I think we may actually get in trouble for this.

Re:The question is

[paz5]

ihackstuff gave me a db error... here are the other two I have:

inurl:"ViewerFrame?Mode="
inurl:"axis-cgi/mjpg"

Re:The question is

[Anonymous Coward]

Heh, want a *bunch* of them... Type the following into Google:

"toshiba network camera" login

Enjoy :-)

Re:The question is

[spectre_240sx]

Good to do a google search on url's before visiting if there's any question. I was unfortunate enough to see tubgirl once and I'm still not sure if my vision has completely returned.

Re:The question is

[templest]

holy shit? I just got on a webcam of
"UCLA Basic Plasma Science Facility (BAPSF)"

http://128.97.30.165/axis-cgi/mjpg/video.cgi

Re:The question is

[AmbyVoc]

What, an empty page??

- Voice of Ambience -

Re:The question is

[AmbyVoc]

Oh, That's what it was! I knew it.. damn that privoxy is good.. :)

Re:The question is

[ffunch]

I did a page at http://www.opentopia.com/hiddencam.php that picks up a few hundred of the cameras found in google with inurl:"axis-cgi/mjpg", scans them every couple of hours, grabs the first picture from the Motion JPEG stream, geocodes them with their general location, and shows them in one page for easy access. Saves a bit of the trouble.

Re:The question is

[Crayon Kid]

Not many people showing up in those cameras. Next to none, actually. It gives you and eery feeling, like everybody has left the planet and those who are shown from afar are just the aliens doing the final sweep. Heh, I bet if I look out the window right now I'll see...

Re:The question is

[Anonymous Coward]

Hehe, No, its just a Sunday.

Re:The question is

[AlexTheBeast]

Tech-recipes has had a good list for a while as well.

Google: Search for Public Online Cameras and Video Feeds

AlexTheBeast

Re:The question is

[Anonymous Coward]

It is snowing in Japan!!

Re:The question is

[Anonymous Coward]

You must be new here.

Re:The question is

[tmika]

Yeah, Sunday's do sort of have a post-apocalyptic, "where did all the people go?" feel a lot of places.

I lived in St. Paul, Minnesota for a while (which is the capitol, afterall), and on Sunday evening, it felt like there was a martial law curfew in affect.

Re:The question is

[gstoddart]

inurl:/view/index.shtml

It's like thousands of webcams cried out and were suddenly shasldotted.

Re:The question is

[Anonymous Coward]

Interesting... it turned up a webcam for a lab I'm in pretty regularly.

Re:The question is

[Anonymous Coward]

source code ?

Re:The question is

[Anonymous Coward]

"This Website is powered by PostNuke"

That's so true. Like what a webserver would be like after a nuclear weapon - unable to serve pages.

Re:The question is

[Anonymous Coward]

inurl:"ViewerFrame?Mode="

Re:The question is

[Anonymous Coward]

We know.

Re:The question is

[Anonymous Coward]

Has anyone tried Athena from http://www.snakeoillabs.com? Looks like some guy's written a neato tool (doze only I'm afraid) specifically for this kind of thing.

Re:The question is

[complete loony]

Wave to the camera then. Someone from here might even see it :)

Security vs. Stupidity

[bigattichouse]

This just underlines the engineer's problem with making something secure, yet making sure every moron in the U.S. can plug it in and turn it on and have it basically work.

Re:Security vs. Stupidity

[ackthpt]

This just underlines the engineer's problem with making something secure, yet making sure every moron in the U.S. can plug it in and turn it on and have it basically work.

Well, it's really just another example of engineers doing the job right, only to then have a PHB of some ilk tell them, "Now I want to be able to watch this from my office or my cell phone or from home, etc." Where the Engineer exclaims, "Doh!" and does it because he/she's not paid to THINK.

Re:Security vs. Stupidity

[GrunthosTheFlatulent]

When given a choice, every manufacturer out there will make something easy to set up at the cost of being safe, out of the box. Just look at wireless access points: plug them in and they simply work. (Of course, you've just created a hotspot for your whole neighborhood) Clearly they have calculated that if they do not require you to go through the extra step of securing it, you are that much less likely to call them for tech support, or return the product.

Re:Security vs. Stupidity

[JPriest]

These are not peoples personal webcams, these are $500 - $2000 buisness cameras most of them are watching traffic and empty offices, and seem to be intended for public access.

Re:Security vs. Stupidity

[elpapacito]

It's not the job of engineers goddamit !

I'm sick and tired of hearing marketing, human resources, finance and 99% of the world of "business" come cry me a river when they complain system doesn't work as expected because they didn't know what the customer really wanted. Not even the customer knew what he wanted, they all came to me saying " it must be cheap and basically print me money "

Yeah sure and If I had the method I'd be working for you fools would I ?

Go ask Alan Greenspan you yahoos !

Re:Security vs. Stupidity

[SamNmaX]

It's not the job of engineers goddamit !

I'm sick and tired of hearing marketing, human resources, finance and 99% of the world of "business" come cry me a river when they complain system doesn't work as expected because they didn't know what the customer really wanted. Not even the customer knew what he wanted, they all came to me saying " it must be cheap and basically print me money "

A big part of engineering is figuring out what the user wants. The user can't be trusted to automatically know exactly what it is he wants that's possible to do. If as an engineer you simply take what's initially asked for, you likely won't get far. If something is impossible, you have to explain to your customer that it is, and provide alternatives. Make sure everyone knows exactly what's going on. While marketers, customers, etc. all have their own faults in the process, you can't simply pass the entire buck to them.

As well, the issue of making something easy to use yet secure, as the grandparent post suggested, is not impossible nor impractical.

Re:Security vs. Stupidity

[Anonymous Coward]

Security vs. Simplicity I think you mean.
Stupidity is a sub-heading under Simplicity.
~ IMP

Re:Security vs. Stupidity

[Anonymous Coward]

Make a system even a moron can use and a moron will use it.

Re:Security vs. Stupidity

[mr_zorg]

A big part of engineering is figuring out what the user wants. The user can't be trusted to automatically know exactly what it is he wants that's possible to do. If as an engineer you simply take what's initially asked for, you likely won't get far. If something is impossible, you have to explain to your customer that it is, and provide alternatives. Make sure everyone knows exactly what's going on. While marketers, customers, etc. all have their own faults in the process, you can't simply pass the entire buck to them.

Strictly speaking, this is the job of an analyst, not the engineer. However, far too many places don't have analysts and rely upon their engineers to perform that function. I agree, though, that an engineer shouldn't just blindly do what they're told. They become little more than code slaves if they do that, and that's the kind of job they'll find outsourced to India next year...

Re:Security vs. Stupidity

[WereTiger]

Actually, it _technically_ isn't the job of an engineer to figure out what the user wants. Engineers are supposed to produce systems to exact specifications, those specifications are drawn up by Analysts.

If an Analysist doesn't do his/her job and determine the needs/wants for the system then the Engineer can't do his/her job either.

Re:Security vs. Stupidity

[tmika]

Well, it's really just another example of engineers doing the job right, only to then have a PHB of some ilk tell them, "Now I want to be able to watch this from my office or my cell phone or from home, etc." Where the Engineer exclaims, "Doh!" and does it because he/she's not paid to THINK.

I agree, but it really is an industry-wide problem with anything targeted at "consumers"/home users.

Unfortunately, since everything is getting connected and we rely on technology more and more, this is becoming an issue.

Everything from Wireless Network, to pre-sp2 WinXP Windows, to almost every home Cable/DSL has some security that should be on off by default to make it usable for end users.

I agree its a marketing/customer relations issue, and not an engineering issue (usually, there are a lot of designs that really failed to take into account the ingenuity of the millions of people who like messing with stuff for the sake of it), but it is a problem.

More unfortunately, its not an easily solved problem. Its not like we can make the average home user tech and security savvy (most people can't program a VCR, let alone program IP Tables), and its not like companies are going to give up market share by seeming difficult to install to average users.

I think we need more default security. If not, identity theft, Worms killin networks, privacy violations, etc., are going to go through the roof. Obviously, even Microsoft is finally sort of realizing this (but look at the sp2 backlash). A lot of it is about making good interfaces and protocols to automate setting up security (like a lot of the Cable/DSL systems are finally picking up), but being a developer myself, I know its much easier said then done, and sometimes, with existing technology, its just plain impossible...

Re:Security vs. Stupidity

[sparkz]

The engineer shoud be paid enough (and educated enough) to tell their employer, "If I make it available to you, it's available to the internet,and (if we're in a vaguely rational county (eg, UK)) that would be illegal." So - No, I won't do that.

Re:Security vs. Stupidity

[daVinci1980]

It's not the job of engineers goddamit !

Whew! That's right! That's why programmers are not engineers! Did you take the PE? Then you're not an engineer.

On the other hand, part of what makes a good programmer is 'customer focus,' the ability to translate from what someone tells you they want into what they actually want.

Re:Security vs. Stupidity

[Griton]

Why on earth would making a webcam available to the internet be illegal? Or did I miss something somewhere along the line?

Re:Security vs. Stupidity

[ratboy666]

Well -- if you KNEW what would sell, and could MAKE it, then you wouldn't need the marketing dept, now, would you?

And THAT was the point of the grandparent post.

Re:Security vs. Stupidity

[elpapacito]

A big part of engineering is figuring out what the user wants.

The customer wants something perfect, that works perfectly, with zero maintenance costs and that he can have for free. There you go, that's all you need to know on what any customer really really wants.

Engineers are not supposed to be work on the discovery phase "ask customer what he realistically wants" neither on the update phase "tell customer he can't have but that" neither concern himself with the very fine legal and psycological details involving a transaction.

The fact the an engineer is at the same time the most suited to do the job (assuming you can find one good at all of them) has seduced somebody into thinking "hey ! I can hire one engineer and make him do the work of 3 person !! The salesman, the manager and the technician ! "

Indeed that can be done, but with LIMITS ! One can't have the output of 3 people from one person without paying COSTS somewhere else.

Many pseudo-MBAs think (yeah, pseudo MBA, some serious MBA is more like an engineer then a sociologist) they can milk and milk and milk people indefinitely, as long as such people don't recognize they're being milked to death.

Guess what, the bucket doesn't END at one point in reality its weight must be divided or at somepoint it will CRASH.

Guess what again, by the time the bucket crash the organizer will be in bahamas counting money.

Re:Security vs. Stupidity

[SamNmaX]

The customer wants something perfect, that works perfectly, with zero maintenance costs and that he can have for free. There you go, that's all you need to know on what any customer really really wants.

Engineers are not supposed to be work on the discovery phase "ask customer what he realistically wants" neither on the update phase "tell customer he can't have but that" neither concern himself with the very fine legal and psycological details involving a transaction.

As some have mentioned, I was slightly off in saying it was the engineer's job to ask the customer, however for better or worse, the engineer's job and analyst's job often get mixed together.

Either way, whoever's job it is to be the analyst (whether it be a separate or shared job) has to coordinate with the business side as well as the customer. Both sides have their roles, and if the business people are allowed to overstep their bounds and make technical decisions, there is going to be problems. A good analyst will stand up to the business people, as well as the customer, to make sure they know what's going on. It won't work out if they don't have that power, whether by their own fault or the fault of the business's structure.

The URL I use

[Anonymous Coward]

I use http://www.google.ca/search?q=inurl%3A%22axis-cgi% 2Fmjpg%22&btnG=Google to find them. It works great.

Re:The URL I use

[Anonymous Coward]

http://webcam.mmhk.cz/axis-cgi/jpg/image.cgi?resol ution=640x480

Re:The URL I use

[Anonymous Coward]

Guys, check this out! There's DICK in the middle of the forest!

http://pmovid.uoregon.edu/axis-cgi/mjpg/video.cg i? &showlength=1

a search string for the lazy/stupid among us

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&safe=off&c2 coff=1&q=inurl%3A%22MultiCameraFrame%3FMode%3D%22

Run your own surveillance

[Brushfireb]

This is why you should never trust some other company with your own surveillance needs. There are plenty of camera + software combinations that can do TCP/IP stuff and you can tinker with it yourself and set it up on your own apache server.

I am sure someone will post with OSS software solutions.

Aside from that, how many people really need web-enabled surveillance? Just record it to HD or have it monitored live in closed-circuit fashion.

Brushfireb

Re:Run your own surveillance

[marcello_dl]

Never tested it, but Zone minder seems promising.

Re:Run your own surveillance

[dnoyeb]

How else you gonna make sure you wife isin't gettin it on with the pool boy?

Re:Run your own surveillance

[nurb432]

Perhaps beacuse a lot of regular people cant even figure out which hole to put the usb camera into? " there are 2, which one does it go into ".

Remember the maket for these things are NOT techies.. ( few products really are, regardless of what many of us like to belive.. )

Why webenabled? Well, a most small business owners want to know what is going on with their 'baby' 24/7. This way they can sit at home and check up on things without driving across town at 2am.

Re:Run your own surveillance

[wankledot]

I work with IP video surveillance (among other things) for a living.

This is a good example of why you SHOULD trust some other company. Chances are that company knows more than you do about setting up a system. Choosing the right people to work with is obviously important. I wouldn't trust myself to set up an alarm system for my offices, I would hire someone who knew what they were doing.

Most of the good cameras out there have built-in webservers. Sending motion JPEG over a network from the embedded webserver on the camera is the most common and efficient way to manage a larger camera installation, especially if you are recording. If you have a school district with 10 sites, 5 cameras each, using a network video system and central recording is a fraction of the cost of a traditional CCTV or even DVR (digital recording of analog cameras) setup. Configuring the camera incorrectly leads to problems like this, taking a step backwards to CCTV or other technology is not the answer.

Re:Run your own surveillance

[wankledot]

Preemptive strike... kill the pool-boy now.

Re:Run your own surveillance

[Fishstick]

chastity belt? :-)

man, I hate it when the wife gets 'rooted' by the (pool|mail|ups)guy!

Re:Run your own surveillance

[GaryOlson]

This is slashdot...

do you really have a wife?

your pasty white complexion tells me you don't have a pool either.

Re:Run your own surveillance

[djdavetrouble]

Listen, I am getting tired of this joke, sure, lots of you are socially inept nerds, but I do have a wife, and I know for a fact that she is outside showing the gardener something or other in the back yard. Let me pull up my surveillance cam, see, there she is showing the gardener the. um . WTF ?!

Re:Run your own surveillance

[VanillaDeath]

But shouldn't the software include a way to generate a .htaccess file at least? Or warn the user that if they don't create a .htaccess file that anyone can view their camera's output?

Re:Run your own surveillance

[vrmlknight]

No this is the case why you SHOULD have a firewall and protect your internal network. if your going to be really security conscious you could set up a security-net something internally on 10.x.x.x or what ever and have that locked down and different physical wiring.

Re:Run your own surveillance

[wankledot]

Exactly. That's the kind of things that any reputable security or networking firm would suggest. A VLAN and/or separate non-public IP space.

Re:Run your own surveillance

[Anonymous Coward]

I do CCTV, the DVR or webcam host would have to be directly accessable to the net (aka not in a private Ip network) to be exposed. Do corperate networks really have full web exposure on every PC?

Re:Run your own surveillance

[Legion303]

Look, he's showing her his hose!

Re:Run your own surveillance

[Anonymous Coward]

My husband *is* the pool boy you insensitive clod!

Re:Run your own surveillance

[JWSmythe]

I did that once. Didn't work very well. She went for a swim, and sunk to the bottom.

It's a terrible shame the tragic accidents my wives came to. hehe.

(to all my future ex-wives reading this, I'm just kidding!!)

Re:Run your own surveillance

[JWSmythe]

Funny thing about that though. When other people start knowing your work, they also know what you miss. The company you choose may leave one seemingly insignificant hole open all the time, and someone like me will come through and exploit it in every one of their customers installations..

That's annoying for Internet stuff. That's costly for alarm systems. We'll use your office alarm system as an example. I may know that an installer doesn't thing twice about maintaince closets, bathrooms, or drop ceiling crawl spaces. So I enter one business through the bathroom, get into the crawlspace, disable the alarm from the wires very nicely run up into the ceiling, and away goes the alarm. Then I do it to another business. And another..

Or, I've installed the alarm myself. Because it's my business I'm securing, I go all out putting motion sensors in every room and space. Anywhere there's a potential hole in the concrete. I put sensors on every door and window. I give it a cell phone notification backup. I get it hooked up with a 24 hour response company, plus have it page me.

Who's place is going to be harder to break into? Yours, where a company did it, or mine?

Yours is one of the pre-built boxes or cameras that are now being featured in the parent story. Mine is running quietly in my office, and the cameras haven't been slashdotted.

Re:Run your own surveillance

[wankledot]

But you're making the huge assumption that you know more than a security company does about installing an alarm. If that's the case, then by all means doing it yourself is the way to go. Most people don't.

Obviously if you can do a better job yourself than another company can, you should. But it's just hubris to think that doing anything yourself will result in a better system than something professional.

Re:Run your own surveillance

[JWSmythe]

I'm saying that it's security through obscurity. If they find a flaw the company does on every installation, then that same flaw will be present in my house. For example, a common passcode that disables the alarm system, or like I used in my previous example, the fact that they always skip a particular room or area. That wouldn't be present in my own installation. Home security isn't rocket science. I won't say anyone can do it, but if you really think about it, it's not very hard. What are the possible entrances? Doors, windows, access panels, and skylights. How do you want to secure them? NO and NC switches and sensors? Motion sensors? A combination of both?

Of course, I am the type of person who has done this before.

The story was about exactly this though. People trusted that these security devices were secure, but now you find that you didn't secure anything. Not only that, you've given up all your security to anyone who may stumble across your security cameras. Now I, from the comfort of my own home, through a proxy (or series of proxies) anywhere in the world, can watch your staff movements in detail, and record it all for later viewing.

Is your school, home, or business really secure, if I can see all the human traffic in the building? I may know that you don't have night security, or that they stop by 4 times a night, and at what times. I may find out that the alarms trip themselves in the rain and are ignored. I may find that you have no security and are completely dependant on the cameras. So, if I were to disable the cameras, and go in on a Friday night, by Monday morning, you may find that your business is empty..

On the other hand, if the cameras had been secured, at best I'd know that you have cameras, but have no way of knowing what they show.

Requires ActiveX Control

[bigtallmofo]

Most of the ones that are found via Google require an ActiveX control. Don't get too excited.

Re:Requires ActiveX Control

[Anonymous Coward]

?

RTFA.

Re:Requires ActiveX Control

[northcat]

nope. can see it in firefox.

Re:Requires ActiveX Control

[Spad]

All the Axis cams also run an MJPEG stream which will work in ActiveX-free browsers.

Re:Requires ActiveX Control

[wankledot]

If you can get in to manage the camera's preferences, you can switch from ActiveX to Java video. Hopefully they've locked down the setup page, but you never know.

Re:Requires ActiveX Control

[moon-monster]

Try searching on:
inurl:"axis-cgi/mjpg"

This gets you the mjpg stream every time. Works fine here on firefox 64-bit.

Re:Requires ActiveX Control

[warb]

That search works great! What does the tag/proto inurl: refer to?

P.s.
Camera setup should configured with better location information than most of the Cameras, Lat/Long whould be intresting.

Re:Requires ActiveX Control

[Anonymous Coward]

It makes no difference that it requires an active-x control, it installs on demand if you give it permission.

Re:Requires ActiveX Control

[wernercd]

'inurl:' is apparently a Google search perameter.

inurl:"view/index.shtml" finds websites that have view/index.shtml in the hyperlink.

Never knew those kind of search tools existed. Does anyone have a link to a good site on Google search? Actually... I'll do a google search on it myself. I'm bored.

And for those grammer nazi's... I'm tired and don't care if I mispelled something. :)

Re:Requires ActiveX Control

[Anonymous Coward]

can i see that mjpeg stream in internet explorer?

some cameras

[cat.os.mandros]

For the curious, here there is an article (in spanish, sorry) with some links to cams and what terms to search to find more, happy watching :)

http://sindominio.net/suburbia/article.php3?id_art icle=146

Re:some cameras

[Anonymous Coward]

This links to one of the first blogs that mentioned this issue. Furthermore, it found a better search term to search for axis cameras. It's a pity is in Spanish.... those Spaniards :-)

Re:some cameras

[gallir]

That's previous link is mine, I first saw it in forevergeek.com.

Dino still lives!

[Anonymous Coward]

When some wag placed Dino in front of a volcano monitoring camera on White Island it was claimed that he would slowly disintegrate from noxious fumes and gases emitted from the volcano. And yet, Dino is still smiling back at us in defiance...

The best ones so far

[Anonymous Coward]

I got a jump on this from the Boing Boing post a couple days ago. I use inurl:"axis-cgi/mjpg".
This one seems to show every page printed off of some printer. http://81.72.76.218/view/index.shtml. Right now it's some photo.
This one http://217.148.2.106/view/index.shtml shows somes bar (German?) that seems very active.
This one http://24.173.235.172:8001/axis-cgi/mjpg/video.cgi ?camera=&showlength=1&resolution=640x480 Shows animals under the knife, I've yet to catch a surgery yet.

Anybody find any other cool ones?

Re:The best ones so far

[zwei2stein]

some kind of australian lab/research instalation, seems to be meeting room:

http://130.102.102.252/ViewerFrame?Mode=Motion&L an guage=0

Re:The best ones so far

[asreal]

Austin International Airport Security:

http://lobbycamera4.abia.org/axis-cgi/mjpg/video .c gi?camera=&resolution=640x480

Re:The best ones so far

[jimicus]

This must be the first time in history a video camera has been slashdotted.

Re:The best ones so far

[Anonymous Coward]

security cam for Nasa JPL office for Stardust program.

Re:The best ones so far

[Anonymous Coward]

Imperial Palace, Las Vegas?

http://24.234.255.102/axis-cgi/mjpg/video.cgi?ca me ra=4&resolution=352x240

It's a panning camera - I just kept hitting reload.

Re:The best ones so far

[wytcld]

There must be some way that your divulging this offends the PATRIOT Act.

Re:The best ones so far

[starman97]

It's not really security, it's just the lines for the ticket counters. Kind of usefull really, if you live close to the airport, just check in, see how long the lines are and adjust your schedule accordingly.

Re:The best ones so far

[Sir Tandeth]

No, this is the x-ray scanning stations. Also, there are lobby cameras 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5 http://lobbycamera1.abia.org/ http://lobbycamera2.abia.org/ http://lobbycamera3.abia.org/ http://lobbycamera4.abia.org/

Re:The best ones so far

[Anonymous Coward]

That is so weird... I'm on camera every week!

That is the area just before the first entrance to the gates. There must be another camera monitoring the second entrance.

You can see me on Monday mornings...

Re:The best ones so far

[Crayon Kid]

Considering the Slashdot collective managed to do it to a LED display before, a camera doesn't surprise me as much anymore by comparison. Wait for "fridge owners carelessly leave their contents available for the world to see" and the subsequent /.'ing which will eventually lead to the fridge shutting down and the tuna sandwich going bad. Take "Google discover pages you're not supposed to see" and replace Google and pages with any search engine and online content. Seen it once, you've seen it all. What would be more important is people finally getting the freakin' point.

Re:The best ones so far

[NuclearDog]

Panning way right shows me some text on a wall...

"Intelligent Transport
Systems

An Australian Research Council Facility"

ND

Re:The best ones so far

[gerdemb]

Isn't this the same views that you can get from the public web page? I don't think this one is supposed to be a secret...

http://www.abia.org/c2g/curb2gate.htm

Re:The best ones so far

[ttldkns]

number on the telephone... (it zooms in that far with great clarity)

334-69705 lets ring it!!

Re:The best ones so far

[Anonymous Coward]

Who's PATRIOT act fucker?

Only the stupid yanks have implemented it, here in Australia we've got different rules, albeit, just as crap now...

Re:The best ones so far

[Anonymous Coward]

Not sure what this is, looks like something out of Heidizilla

Re:The best ones so far

[Anonymous Coward]

"Hi, I was wondering if you could look into the camera for me thanks, oh... and wave."
"What? Who is this?"
"I'm watching you..."

Re:The best ones so far

[Anonymous Coward]

From the IP address, it appears to be at the University of Queensland so the full number would be +617 33469705 for any one who feels the need to reach out and touch someone.

Re:The best ones so far

[4A6F656C]

Seems there is also:

http://lobbycamera1.abia.org/axis-cgi/mjpg/video.c gi?camera=&resolution=640x480
http://lobbycamera2.abia.org/axis-cgi/mjpg/video.c gi?camera=&resolution=640x480
http://lobbycamera3.abia.org/axis-cgi/mjpg/video.c gi?camera=&resolution=640x480

For different views :)

Hey buddy...

[Anonymous Coward]

This is slashdot - where are the nudie shots...

Re:Hey buddy...

[mini me]

I saw a couple of college age kids making out on one cam, but that's as close as I have got.

Re:Hey buddy...

[imothepixie]

found a middle age man wandering around without trousers.... ehem quickly back to that sexy building i found a few cams back.....

The search queries are...

[Anonymous Coward]

Use Google and search for the following:
inurl:"ViewerFrame?Mode="
or:
inurl:"MultiCameraFrame?Mode="

Re:The search queries are...

[Anonymous Coward]

and:
inurl:"axis-cgi/mjpg"

Re:The search queries are...

[Norgus]

Forced browser id to firefox in those links, perchance?

search keyword - find the most interesting place!

[Janek Kozicki]

one two

I have clicked some of them, and indded some provide pictures of various random places, like shopping center, bureau, or parking lot. But I've noticed that some of them are asking for a password, or simply refuse to connect. Does it mean that admins had fast response to this issue? :)

And btw - slashdotting thousands of cameras around the world is really funny. Karma prize for a person that finds the most interesting places!

X10 anyone?

[ackthpt]

This is why you should never trust some other company with your own surveillance needs. There are plenty of camera + software combinations that can do TCP/IP stuff and you can tinker with it yourself and set it up on your own apache server.

Sure, and if you're inexperienced or a moron then you can do it wrong, just as these people have. High quality tools can still be misused by dolts.

I am sure someone will post with OSS software solutions. Aside from that, how many people really need web-enabled surveillance? Just record it to HD or have it monitored live in closed-circuit fashion.

Does anyone remember the article, couple years back about people using X10 cams for survelience, which were easily monitored from, not a black suburban, but so much as a Yugo with a coathanger antenna out in the street? It's about understanding the deployment needs and big picture of security.

"hey, I can see myself in the bathroom in the internet.... uh..."

Search Keyword

[Anonymous Coward]

The search keyword is inurl:"axis-cgi/mjpg"

Arrrgh me eyes!

[Anonymous Coward]

Why did you have to say that now you made me look too...

Re:Arrrgh me eyes!

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm gonna be sick!!! :-(

keywords

[unikorn]

inurl:"view/index.shtml"

interesting

[mr_tommy]

On pages with non-enlish text (E.G. this one http://aquashop-es.miemasu.net/MultiCameraFrame?Mo de=Motion&Language=1)

change language=1 to language=0 to get english text.

Daycares with cams

[FerretFrottage]

While looking ofr daycare for my kids, I came across a few that offered web based cam viewing of the kids/classrooms. My wife thought it was a great idea til I suggested that anyone could potentially view the kids....sex offenders, children theft services, etc. Sure the school offered password based access, but any system that is turned on can be compromised. Maybe it's the paranoid dad in me, but while it may be nice to see what my kids and teachers are doing, it scares me that some pediphile may be watching what kids are doing, learning their favorite activites, and their overall daily schedule. The ped could even be a parent that has a kid registered at the school making access even easier. So in the end, I axed schools that has cams (especially wireless ones) and convinced my wife based on the reasons above.

Perhaps some places have policies where the camera is on only for certain periods of time that vary weekly and IT departments that verify access logs, but I saw no such plans when I checked.

Re:Daycares with cams

[Anonymous Coward]

And what exactly are "children theft services"?

Re:Daycares with cams

[fishbot]

There is one school in the UK trialling this, but each parent has a username and password to prevent unauthorised access. Still, if a username/password combination is all that is required...

Re:Daycares with cams

[Anonymous Coward]

Uh, wouldn't a pedophile prefer to target a facility that isn't loaded with cameras? Also if the pedophile has l33t hacking skills, fuck the cameras, your daycares database contains plenty of info on your child, checkout and checkin times, home address, etc.

Re:Daycares with cams

[Anonymous Coward]

Christ....A little paranoid huh? What happens when the kid has to walk out in pubic, are you gonna shroud it so no one can look at the kid? People have eyes and see other people out in public....When your kid is on the playground at your cam free daycare, how do you know some sicko isn't watching them?

Re:Daycares with cams

[Anonymous Coward]

" it scares me that some pediphile may be watching what kids are doing, learning their favorite activites, and their overall daily schedule. " Typical Ameri-cam FUD!! Go Get Yourself a life!!

Re:Daycares with cams

[Jeff DeMaagd]

If you agree with the Slashdot mantra that nothing is safe, you don't need cameras to learn the stuff you suggest. Not having the cameras makes it a little harder, not impossible.

Re:Daycares with cams

[horza]

Maybe it's the paranoid dad in me, but while it may be nice to see what my kids and teachers are doing, it scares me that some pediphile may be watching what kids are doing, learning their favorite activites, and their overall daily schedule. The ped could even be a parent that has a kid registered at the school making access even easier. So in the end, I axed schools that has cams (especially wireless ones) and convinced my wife based on the reasons above.

You sound totally paranoid. The driver of your school bus could be a pedo. In fact don't take your kid to the beach, a pedo-infested hunting ground. Statistically walking down the street your kid may pass a few.

Despite what the media may say, the world is populated by mostly normal people. Teaching your kid the dangers and a bit of common sense, and a CCTV camera by the school gates where the kids are picked up, should ensure nothing happens. Please don't inflict your irrational fears on your kids, the media and certain Prominent Politicians will be doing far too much of that already.

Phillip.

Re:Daycares with cams

[andymar]

Have you asked your children if they want a camera in their face ? Do you even care want they think ?

Re:Daycares with cams

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree with the others, you're being too paranoid about pedos. To believe some Americans, for every 5 people there is one pedo, one sex-offender, and 2 terrorists ::rollseyes::. My advice: cut-down on news.

But there is another reason to avoid daycares with cameras: the teachers will end up acting for the camera instead of doing what's best for the kids. They will only do things that will not offend any of the parents, their behavior will become bland and predictable, and your kids will grow up in an environment lacking any creativity.

On the other hand, in a daycare with cameras, your kids will get used to being monitored 24/7, and that'll prepare them for the real world outside. :-]

Re:Daycares with cams

[BorgCopyeditor]

FerretFrottage (714136)

Funny how people with one deviant obsession are so annoyed by people with another. ;-)

Re:Daycares with cams

[danila]

You are an idiot. It is an order of magnitude more likely that your child would be raped/coerced to sex by your brother, uncle, father, cousin or another relative. Not to mention that you are extremely likely to mess up the life of the child in the future with your paranoia. No, Cindy, you can't go on a hiking trip with your class, a pervert may be hiding in the woods. No, Cindy, you can't go to a prom, there might be a paedophile there. No, Cindy, I don't like that boyfriend of yours, he seems to be sexually attracted to young girls. Meanwhile you probably secretly fantasize about having sex with underage cheerleaders yourself...

Re:Daycares with cams

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe it's the paranoid dad in me, but while it may be nice to see what my kids and teachers are doing, it scares me that some pediphile may be watching what kids are doing, learning their favorite activites, and their overall daily schedule. The ped could even be a parent that has a kid registered at the school making access even easier.

You know what? I'M a pedophile. An EVIL pedophile. My evil deed is to sit on Slashdot, waiting for people to admit to having kids. Then I hack the Slashdot server, trace the person who posted, find out where they live, and sneak in in the night and molest their kids. Bwa ha ha ha ha! I AM TEH EVIL!!!!11!!!11!eleventyone

Or maybe you really are paranoid.

Re:Daycares with cams

[mslinux]

Perhaps some places have policies where the camera is on only for certain periods of time that vary weekly and IT departments that verify access logs, but I saw no such plans when I checked.

You're joking, right? Daycare jobs pay below the poverty level. Their workers are a big percentage of the 'working poor'. You think they have enough money to pay 'IT Departments'... what planet are you from ;)

Re:Daycares with cams

[Threni]

> My wife thought it was a great idea til I suggested that anyone could
> potentially view the kids....sex offenders

Why would sex offenders want to watch your kids in a classroom? Is there a problem with sex offenders looking at women in the street? What's the difference?

But yeah, if you have a problem with strangers observing your children then perhaps you shouldn't hook them up to a webcam.

Re:Daycares with cams

[CmdrGravy]

What are the chances of the password being a childs name or date of birth I wonder ?

Re:Daycares with cams

[CmdrGravy]

Yes, Paedogeddon draws ever closer.

Re:Daycares with cams

[Anonymous Coward]

when the kid has to walk out in pubic

Eh. Hmm. Not sure that's what you meant to say...

Re:Daycares with cams

[Anonymous Coward]

However, they won't get pictures of your kid or learn much about 'em by walking by.

If the school bus driver stared at your kid the whole time, their suspicious activity would be detected.

But from the privacy of a stranger's living room, it's quite different: your kid isn't ordinarily going to meet every other or even most of the other kid's parents and other relatives.

Not to mention the whole "spying" factor is pretty darn spooky. I don't think i'd want my kids going to some school where hundreds of random people could spy, even if they're parents, or adults related to the other kids

If I wouldn't be comfortable with the kid going there without the spying, I sure as heck wouldn't send him there with the spying. (Them doing spying implies that it's necessary... they aren't sure they've chosen good, reliable/trustworthy staff?)

Re:Daycares with cams

[clean_stoner]

Statistically walking down the street your kid may pass a few.

How does someone statistically walk down a street?

Re:Daycares with cams

[BitterOak]

How does someone statistically walk down a street?

It's a quantum mechanical thing. Any time you go somewhere you are really taking all possible routes along all possible streets. Only when you are observed do the laws of statistics come into play and the routes collapse into one real route. So the surveillance cameras do indeed play a vital role of providing that observer. Caveat: it's been a while since I studied QM, so I might be slightly wrong here.

Re:Daycares with cams

[ConceptJunkie]

Get really drunk and do a random walk...

Re:Daycares with cams

[mikeb39]

Excellently said.

Re:Daycares with cams

[Anonymous Coward]

what happens when the street is blocked by a wall with 2 small slits though ?

Re:Daycares with cams

[CSG_SurferDude]

If I had Mod Points, I'd mod you up!

Good Flamming technique!

Re:Daycares with cams

[dj42]

I just thought I should point out this is one of those stats that loses its meaning out of context, sort of like "Most Car Accidents Occur Near Home, So Buckle Up Even For Short Trips". Well, yes, smartass, they do occur near home mostly. Why? Because 90% of car trips ARE NEAR HOME. IF you're constantly driving near where you live, it seems like it'd increase the chances of a wreck there, yes? Same with kids being hurt by their family. Who do they see more... random pedos walking down the street, or their family?... Seriously.

Re:Daycares with cams

[Anonymous Coward]

I think he was referring to the cheerleaders on NFL football teams. What does that say about you if you're automatically associating cheerleaders with being underage high school girls?

Re:Daycares with cams

[Anonymous Coward]

You pass through both unless you're drunk, in which case you pass through all four.

Re:Daycares with cams

[Anonymous Coward]

Likewise, most car accidents near home are in residential-ish areas, which typically have fairly low speed limits. While it would be unwise not to buckle up, your typical low-speed collision will not be aided by a seatbelt.

Re:Daycares with cams

[RevAaron]

While I too am impressed with your troll-fu, I feel obliged to point out that NFL cheerleaders are usually very much of age. Just FYI, most NFL cheerleaders are pretty good looking, so it isn't all that whacky or wild for him to be fantasizing about them. Unless you're some puritan and think that you should never masturbate, whether the woman in your mind is your wife or some cheerleader. YOU WILL GO BLIND!

Re:Daycares with cams

[Anonymous Coward]

The ped could even be a parent that has a kid registered at the school making access even easier.

Things that make you go hmmmm.

But seriously, instead of raising a f***ed up kid in an environment of fear and suspicion, you might want to see someone about YOUR issues regardless of whether that involves confused feelings, an exerience that you had or just too much TV.

Remember, most child abuse takes place in the home and that statistically YOU (the parent) are the biggest risk factor...mitigate it.

Re:Daycares with cams

[Seraphim_72]

Meanwhile you probably secretly fantasize about having sex with underage cheerleaders yourself...

Who doesn't? Have you seen some of those young bucks that toss those girls in the air? Dreamy I tell ya.

Sera

Re:Daycares with cams

[strider_starslayer]

Better not take them to a school that has windows, or outdoor activities then, cause a good telescope costs a lot less then a computer.

I hope you are at least consistant and apply your same level of fearmongering to the physical aspects of any place you consider enrolling your child in, which would mean your kid is not in a daycare.

The ability to watch your child at there daycare allows YOU to take note of any new interests they may have. I mean it goes without saying that you can't watch your kid during the day- that's why it's called a day-care. However, just because you can't physically watch them dosen't mean you now ignore them- cameras allow you as a a parant to spend some time with your kid even if it's only for a half hour during your lunch.

Re:Daycares with cams

[fishbot]

yep, hence the ... having a password is no security. In fact, it's worse! It's apparent security, which leads to a false sense of security in the individual.

Re:Daycares with cams

[Anonymous Coward]

This kind of post is NOT helpful to anyone. Your abusive tone is degrading, not to mention irrational. This parent SHOULD be paranoid. It's her/his job to keep the kids safe. BTW, before you call someone else an idiot, learn to SPELL! The word is "pedophile".

Re:search keyword - find the most interesting plac

[Lanoitarus]

Now the real question is, can the slashdot effect destroy all 1500 camera servers? ... Ive got 100 bucks on "yes".

Some problem solving skills

[Anonymous Coward]

I got "If no image is displayed, there might be too many viewers, or the browser configuration may have to be changed. See help for detailed instructions on how to do this." from three in four camera`s....

What an elegant solution, just post the problem on slashdot and watch many hundreds of tiny embedded (axis is linuxppc based iirc) webservers get slashdotted completly

ooh

[Besatt]

Holy crap: "women doing laundry".

Re:ooh

[DarkEdgeX]

Sounds positively HOT, which cam was that? My wife never does the laundry!

Re:ooh

[MrPink2U]

You won't find my wife on that one...

Re:ooh

[m50d]

I think I speak for all of us when I say:

Where! Where! Give us a link, NOW!

Re:ooh

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't do your laundry because I don't live with you. ;)

Anonymous Coward
aka The Wife

Re:ooh

[Anonymous Coward]

You didn't do my laundry even when you DID live with me. :P

detailed links

[pollock]

graffe.com suggests searching for inurl:"ViewerFrame?Mode=".

You can do slightly bettter by searching for inurl:"MultiCameraFrame?Mode=", as mentioned on Metafilter.

Re:detailed links

[mastervisi]

Another fun keyword search is inurl:"/remote6/".
Tracker Cam's use this in their urls. These cam's are they type that can be move around and seem to be one of the favs for "in the bedroom" used cam's.

Re:detailed links

[nolife]

Okay, whoever else is viewing http://216.76.95.195:8090/remote6/, stop panning to the window, I want to zoom in on the desk. It should be my turn to control the camera now.

Re:detailed links

[CmdrGravy]

Can anyone read what is written on the bit's of paper on the desk ?

Re:detailed links

[Anonymous Coward]

I can't. about 12 noon EST, there was a dude and a lady making copies on a machine to the left of the window. Must have been OT as the place looks empty. Pretty boring now. How could they not have noticed the camera moving around?

Re:detailed links

[Anonymous Coward]

I think it says:

Jim, the camera keeps moving by itself. Can you fix that?

Re:detailed links

[Anonymous Coward]

Ok, I found out who these folks are, Max Tool Inc. Guess what, not only do they already know they are being watched, they even put a link to this webcam on their front page.

This make me think this whole slashdot story is over-reacting as usual. Everbody in this threat feel like they're clever spooks sneaking into people's private life, but face it, you're all just watching public webcams intended for this purpose. Why do you think it's listed in google in the first place? Nerds!

Simple solution

[Snags]

It should be obvious, but any web server that doesn't want to be on google should serve up the appropriate robots.txt file. This includes webcams in their default configuration.

Re:Simple solution

[Oriumpor]

intitle:"Smoothwall Express" inurl:cgi-bin "up * days"

Am I thinking too hard or isn't it common sense to disable external web access to a firewall... that'd be like putting your switching gear on the outside world... wtfmate

Re:Simple solution

[DarKry]

Is this honestly a new concept to people. This is what google is for after all isn't it. If people are leaving their cameras http server open to anonymous access then they either A) want the world to see it or B) deserve to have the world watch them in the shower. webcams and firewalls are hardly the extent of this problem. Buy any device that serves http and find a unique string in the address and you will get a ton of hits. Of the top of my head try: inurl:"hp/device/this.LCDispatcher" That should give you some hp printers, an excellent stepping stone to get access behind a firewall I find. They are esspecially interesting as some of them have onboard java VMs. I have a whole slew of chai java apps I have thrown together which do fun things like tunnel tcp traffic. Given the attention this specific search has gotten you probably won't be able to find cams this way for much longer. But I'll warrant that a very small percentage of the admins out there who are told to "go put a password on the cameras" think to do the same with all their other http servers.

Re:Simple solution

[-=Zak=-]

In our case, our webcams are only availble from the LAN and we only access them remotely via VPN. I can't imagine why anyone would ever put a webcam on a public IP address unless they specifically WANT anyone and everyone to see it...

-Zak

Re:Simple solution

[RevAaron]

You can't edit the robots.txt file on one of these cams. They are running an embedded web server, not something you can just FTP and edited copy too. Perhaps Axis/Panasonic should provide a robots.txt file in ROM by default that would avoid this in the future? Or allow firmware updates for those who want it?

We have a few password protected Axis cams in the University library where I work. I helped set them up and maintain the server. The server is running on the cams itself.

Re:Simple solution

[Snags]

Perhaps Axis/Panasonic should provide a robots.txt file in ROM by default

That's exactly what I'm saying. The authors of the web server, not the administrator-users, should have taken the steps to prevent Google from crawling the cameras.

Re:Simple solution

[Anonymous Coward]

But as I found out, the authors of those webcams WANT to be watched.

Read my previous post for more details.

Welcome to last October

[dq5 studios]

Johnny at IHackStuff has a huge list of fun things like this you can get from google.
Here is the list of searches for network aware stuff: Google Cached since main site is down
Some search phrases for cameras are: "camera linksys inurl:main.cgi" and
"powered by webcamXP" "Pro|Broadcast"

Don't forget that google can limit results to region by using "site:.jp" or similar.

Re:Welcome to last October

[CdBee]

I once had cause to google-search the text on the login page of a comsumer broadband router. The results were surprising ;-)

Nothing new

[Rekkr]

This is nothing new... I have known about it for months. I wonder why it was only mentioned in blogs the past week or so? Anyway, here's the link: http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&q=inur l%3A%22ViewerFrame%3FMode%3D%22&btnG=Google%20Sear ch

Re:Nothing new

[Anonymous Coward]

"I wonder why it was only mentioned in blogs the past week or so?"

Because bloggers have nothing better to do with their time?

Fun but dangerious?

[Anonymous Coward]

Following an item on The Reg http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/01/08/web_survei llance_cams_open_to_all/ I have been looking at some of the result given by google. One interesting one that came up was http://lobbycamera3.abia.org/axis-cgi/mjpg/video.c gi?camera=&resolution=640x480 which turns out to be an airport in Mr Bush's home state of Texas. http://www.ci.austin.tx.us/austinairport/ This just goes to show that even supposed security professionals don't bother to read the instructions on their new toys. Free to air surveillance for Mr. Bin Laden?

Re:Fun but dangerious?

[mikewhittaker]

I presume the Bushism in the Subject was intentional ;-)

Incidentally, Bush was born in Connecticut, so I often wonder why they call Texas his home state.

Adopted, I suppose.

Re:Fun but dangerious?

[Anonymous Coward]

robots.txt

Re:Fun but dangerious?

[legoleg]

Because he wants you to... makes him seem less uppity, so NASCAR fans will vote for him... a ranch helps too.

Re:Fun but dangerious?

[Anonymous Coward]

George H.W. Bush and family moved from Connecticut to Midland, Texas when George W. Bush was ~2 years old. I doubt he even remembers living in Connecticut.

Similarly, Dwight Eisenhower was born in Texas, but grew up in Kansas. I doubt he considered himself a Texan.

Funny

[Rekkr]

The article says, "Video surfers are using this knowledge to peek in on office and restaurant interiors, a Japanese barnyard, women doing laundry, the interior of an Internet collocation facility, and a cage full of rodents, among other things, in locales scattered around the world." Funny thing is, I have seen all of those, like the article is talking about the same ones I was spying on. But I couldn't find one of a women's dressing room. :(

HAH!

[Anonymous Coward]

we'll never give you the search query!

slashdot the fun? hardly..

it's available to anyone with five minutes of time and half-a-clue :)
(and totally worth finding hehehehe)

Re:HAH!

[Anonymous Coward]

what sucks is now that it was on slash dot people will start wiseing up god damit slashdot

a bunch of peepings toms...

[Saeger]

...or a glimpse at the "transparent society"?

In any case, I have to admit that one of my guilty pleasures used to be (before the slashdotting) this fun link to... 137 java-controllable webcams around the world: http://www.google.com/search?q=intitle%3Aliveapple t+inurl%3ALvAppl

A certain japanese construction site has made a lot progress lately. :)

Slashdot effect on webcams?

[byteCoder]

Is this the first recorded instance of a wide array of small webcam servers getting simultaneously slashdotted?

Re:Slashdot effect on webcams?

[lpret]

Well, remember the Christmas tree lights guy? If his had been real, that would have been the first, but I think this is the first confirmed slashdotting of webcams.

Re:search keyword - find the most interesting plac

[2MuchC0ffeeMan]

I win:

http://63.243.46.98:8081/axis-cgi/mjpg/video.cgi ...

3xpl01tz for these cameras

[rubz]

Alot of these cameras are exploitable too. It was fun along time ago making these cameras mine... ofcourse I always reset the pass...ofcourse... There is an exploit here: http://www.k-otik.com/exploits/08242004.Axis.sh.ph p For those still asking, the search string is: inurl:"view/index.shtml" For those lazy ones here it is wrapped up and packaged for you: http://www.google.com.au/search?q=inurl%3A%22view% 2Findex.shtml%22 The following is a list of servers: http://www.networkpunk.com/?q=node/view/614 Thank you. ViceVirtue

Where do you want to go today? (tm)

[PNutts]

Combine this with the IP address locator (http://www.geobytes.com/IpLocator.htm?GetLocation ) and take your dream vacation from the comfort of your own !

ZOOM! ZOOM!

[Corellon Larethian]

Where's the bloody ZOOM!!

Re:ZOOM! ZOOM!

[Anonymous Coward]

You need a computer from movies to zoom as far as you want to.

can't seem to find...

[Anonymous Coward]

any women's locker rooms. :(

Root Password

[nodnoL]

There is also a known vulnerability with the root password

http://cert.uni-stuttgart.de/archive/bugtraq/2001/ 12/msg00067.html

Re:Root Password

[Gordonjcp]

One of the things the linked article discusses is ways of setting default passwords that are unique(-ish) to a given unit. This is a solved problem - coded car radios.

Many coded car radios can have the codes recovered or reprogrammed with a new code. Sometimes the codes can be determined from the serial number.

Does it matter they are public?

[nurb432]

Since most of them are being used as simple security cameras for simi-public areas, there really isn't much secret data that is going to be discovered..

So you can watch cars in a parking lot.. Or people mill around the mall...Big risk there..

I don't see a big deal that most of them are not being locked down. Unless i missed something here..

Re:Does it matter they are public?

[acvh]

or people in line at the airport security checkpoint?

Re:Does it matter they are public?

[nurb432]

Not sure if that was meant as sarcasm or not..

Its still a simi-public area. You could go down and stand there in person and watch..

You would look silly, but its legal ( today ) to look at people..

Re:Does it matter they are public?

[surprise_audit]

The "big deal" to us on SlashDot is that a bunch of so-called security people have installed *something* without taking basic security precautions. The "big deal" to the general public is that, not only are they being watched at the mall or wherever, but the id10ts who installed the cameras are letting anyone, including terrorists, access the cameras.

On the other hand, the general public won't give a damn about it, until someone convinces them that they have a right to walk through the mall without anyone seeing them on camera, and never mind that a thousand people have seen them...

Re:Does it matter they are public?

[nurb432]

But 'terrorists' have eyes too. They can just go to the mall.. and look all they want.

Go to the mall yourself, and you are seen by many eyes in person. Do i *personally* like being recorded, no as its no ones business i was shopping that day. But unfortunately in reality its little different then being viewed by people and them taking notes... so its a losing battle. ( actually thats my my 05 resolution, only pick battles that have a chance of being won, and drop the rest.. )

By fearing that 'terrorists' might use everything from a web cam to toilet paper against us, only serves their purpose.. it changes daily life by instilling fear... I refuse to live that way.

Re:Does it matter they are public?

[1u3hr]

but the id10ts who installed the cameras are letting anyone, including terrorists, access the cameras.

Is that sarcasm or stupidity? Without the correct smiley it's hard to tell.

Actually, having surveillance cameras online is an excellent way to make people aware of how much they're being spied on. I might hope their reaction would be more "get rid of these things" than "stop the terrorists/paedophiles/whatever from accessing them.

Re:Does it matter they are public?

[surprise_audit]

We're pretty much in agreement - people get all fired up about *anyone* at all being able to see them on a camera, without apparently realizing that the Mk1 Human Eyeball coupled to a Mk1 Human Brain is far better at image recognition than any generally available surveillance system. That's ignoring the possibility of military systems, which may be a bad assumption...

Re:Does it matter they are public?

[Anonymous Coward]

Well I found one in a museum. Seems to me that the wrong cameras being public could result in theft or something.

Re:Does it matter they are public?

[Legion303]

Oh my God! Terrists! The sky is falling!

Osama's next insidious plot: surf construction site webcams and watch datacenter workers picking their noses. News at 11.

Exploitable....

[Anonymous Coward]

I discovered quite along time ago that if you search for a certain firmware version of the Axis cameras, (Axis Network Camera 2.XX) you can find exploitable cameras that have not had their firmware upgraded to fix a security bug.

http://camera//admin/admin.shtml will bypass the passwords of cameras that don't have the newest firmware. (I found this on security focus)

I fear what happens when someone discovers that they can enable telnet and get root access on tons of cameras, and starts them churning spam....

why public IP?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why in the hell do people assign public IPs to camera's directly?

I know that some maybe public for a reason (news, weather stations, etc...), but I bet the majority don't need to be opened to the public.

Come on people...get with the program.

Before you start slashdotting...

[Anonymous Coward]

I would recommend you not underestimate the intent of some cameras out there.
I wouldn't meddle (ie. admin control) with certain camera's, lest I be visited by such people with gray cadillacs and brown raincoats...

A more clear example is this camera which is absolutely public. I did however encounter similar cameras with a more restricted character (page 16/17 of 2nd google link).

Google Links to Web cams

[Numeric]

Google - home" Requires installation of activeX plug-in. Great video feeds.
Google - inurl:"ViewerFrame?Mode=Motion"
Google - inurl:LvAppl intitle:liveapplet
Google - intitle:"Live View / - AXIS"
Google - "Powered by webcamXP"
Google - inurl:indexFrame.shtml "Axis Video Server"
Google - "MOBOTIX M1" and "open menu"
Google - intitle:flexwatch intext:"Copyright by Seyeon TECH Co"
Google - intitle:"WJ-NT104 Main"

Re:Google Links to Web cams

[legirons]

So... do we get any points if these show a degree confluence?

Re:Google Links to Web cams

[Britz]

Great list. I tried a couple, it works.

Now suppose someone (like many Slasdoters at the moment will, since you were so nice to put up this list) browses a couple cams and witnesses a murder.

What to do? Who to call? How to get the culprit? Maybe save the victim? What is this cam is located in Barzil?

He would ask Slashdot for help.

And this would be the first crime solved on Slashdot. (or not)

Now what if some mean old Slashdot guy puts up a fake cam site with a video of some staged crime...

The implications ...

Think of more!

Re:Google Links to Web cams

[Anonymous Coward]

Axis Network Camera HTTP Authentication Bypass

http://www.securiteam.com/securitynews/5EP0O2KA0 S. html

Google even lets you find exploitable cameras.

Re:Google Links to Web cams

[Eminence]

> Google - home" Requires installation of activeX plug-in. Great video feeds.

No, it doesn't - if you use homeJ.html links, there is a Java viewer that works on all platforms. Like in this search. Some of them have even working controls, although most show boring construction sites.

Re:Google Links to Web cams

[Anonymous Coward]

I have a list of about 40 search terms and methods, but I really do like being able to view cameras without 5 trillion people accessing it once who have no idea how to operate the camera. So you're going to have to work for it just like I did. :)

To OP: Not a bad list however. Just remember that any camera you give out a search term for you should give up being able to view.

Re:Google Links to Web cams

[saskboy]

http://138.26.191.70/
Has a nice one of building construction in an unidentified city. How would you look up where the IP is registered to?

http://cam83727.miemasu.net/ViewerFrame?Mode=Mot io n&Resolution=640x480&Quality=Standard&Interval=10& Size=STD&PresetOperation=Move&Language=1
A restaurant in jp

http://kantan.dyndns.org/ViewerFrame?Mode=Motion &R esolution=640x480&Quality=Standard&Interval=30&Siz e=STD&PresetOperation=Move&Language=1
A Ferry pulled away while I was watching the sun come up. Probably in Japan too.


The ticketpro office

Re:Google Links to Web cams

[Kumochisonan]

Has a nice one of building construction in an unidentified city. How would you look up where the IP is registered to?

$ whois 138.26.191.70

And the answer is, The University of Birmingham, Alabama.

Re:Google Links to Web cams

[renata.org]

I live in Brazil. I could call "Disque Denuncia", an anonymous crime report service that seems to really work. :)

But I could not find any Brazilian cam.... Looks like webcam + broadband is not a very common thing here.

robots.txt not obvious

[Animaether]

It's not really obvious.

If you don't want your webserver to be 'found' then either :
A. don't put it online. (Right)
B. security through obscurity: don't link to it, don't save a record of it. No links = no crawling/spidering.
C. Put it behind a server-wise password

Because in the end, Google may respect robots.txt but I, for one, don't when creating a local cache of a site using HTTrack .
And I'd imagine there's search engines which ignore it just as well.

Re:robots.txt not obvious

[Heisenbug]

B. security through obscurity: don't link to it, don't save a record of it. No links = no crawling/spidering.

That one isn't so reliable anymore. Doesn't the Google toolbar submit pages it visits for indexing?

Re:robots.txt not obvious

[entrigant]

B can also be a problem if you ever give the link to someone with googles search bar in IE. IIRC that will send URL's typed directly into IE to google for indexing.

Re:robots.txt not obvious

[irc.goatse.cx troll]

Or someone visits your page, then clicks a link to someone elses page. that someone else has stats showing top referers, and that page is public. you're now googled.

Re:robots.txt not obvious

[jkovach]

Yes.

Opera (the unregistered version with the ads) also uses Google to provide advertising, so anybody who browses to your site using Opera will make Google aware of your site. I had a page on my website that was linked to only from my IM profile, and I was looking through the logs and noticed someone use Opera to view my site, followed one second later by a bunch of hits from Google (probably trying to figure out what sort of ad to show.) Not linking to a page doesn't keep it secret in today's world - you need a password, period.

Re:robots.txt not obvious

[jeif1k]

Because in the end, Google may respect robots.txt but I, for one, don't when creating a local cache of a site using HTTrack .

What you cache in your HTTrack file doesn't matter to the rest of the world; you aren't Google or even AltaVista.

And I'd imagine there's search engines which ignore it just as well.

I doubt it: crawlers that don't respect robots.txt are going to have a boatload of complaints sent to their ISP, which will either shut them down or force them to fix their crawler.

Re:robots.txt not obvious

[Anonymous Coward]

B. security through obscurity: don't link to it, don't save a record of it. No links = no crawling/spidering.

This is bullshit and works about as well as any other security through obscurity. There are numerous ways of discovering files like this. It's common for people to have web statistics software available on their site - which links to various files on the server. It's common for people to log their referrers - so if you click on any external links on a supposedly "obscure" page, you've just told them where it is. Of course the most common flaw is that anybody you have given the URL to could pass it on.

And I'd imagine there's search engines which ignore it just as well.

If there is, please list a few. People protect things with robots.txt in some cases to avoid a search engine from DoSing them. Any search engine that ignored robots.txt would quickly find itself blocked from crawling a significant portion of the web.

Re:robots.txt not obvious

[Anonymous Coward]

Or they can just convince the ISP to forward the complaints from misguided folks who think robots.txt exclusion is some sacred law to /dev/null.

Re:robots.txt not obvious

[Anonymous Coward]

And said crawlers will get bogged down by dynamically created psudo-random pages with psudo-random links that redirect to the same cgi-bin. Think Wpoison http://www.monkeys.com/wpoison/

Re:robots.txt not obvious

[Animaether]

I did say "no links". I didn't say "no hyperlinks". A referrer is a link. Posting it in your IM profile is a link. Writing it in your high school sweetheart's yearbook is a link.

As for search engines - I can't list a few, but here's a good example of an engine that tries to do it right.. and then fails: Inktomi.

"Q. Why are you ignoring my robots.txt file and accessing my root / document even though I have listed it in robots.txt ?

A: Slurp must retrieve the root document from a site for internal use. If you have disallowed "/" in robots.txt then the root document will not be indexed, nor will it be added to our search database, nor links from it followed. In addition, for performance reasons and to reduce the load on your web server, Slurp caches robots.txt files internally. So if you have modified your exclusion rules in robots.txt Slurp might not recognize the change immediately."

Obviously your robots.txt is not going to do any good if the crawler uses a cached version that doesn't reflect the current state of your site.

Re:search keyword - find the most interesting plac

[Tuxedo Jack]

According to a Google search, the default settings for these are as follows:

Username: root
Password: pass

I'll lay odds there are complacent admins out there.

THIS INFORMATION IS FOR EDUCATIONAL PURPOSES ONLY. DON'T BE A FUCKHEAD.

Re:search keyword - find the most interesting plac

[loucura!]

I disagree:

http://webcam.magic.iac.es/axis-cgi/mjpg/video.cgi

Session Restore

[Anonymous Coward]

Remeber, use the session restore plugin to save the tabs when the java applets crash firefox ;)

Speaking of IP cam, why isn't there higher res....

[tcc]

If you look on axis's site, you see most of them atre ~640x480 resolution, one being 1280x960, toshiba also has one megapixel version but it's astronomically out of price reach for simple applications.

With all of those sub 100 cameras that are going up to 3mpix these days, how come there aren't "HD"webcams or anything similar in the cheap end of the spectrum? it would be good enough for low-level consumer home security, and I'm sure it would sell like crazy. I know the image quality wouldn't be equal to the top webcam using CCD out there, but some application would require more resolution before perfect color reproduction.

Anyways just a thought... If anyone could point me to something that already exists, it would be nice, as I am sure a lot of people here would jump on this... :)

Wireless

[Gary Destruction]

Instead of using wireless on cameras, they could have used wired connections and allowed a VPN login. That might have been a *little* safer. So much for Closed Circuit TV.

so-so interesting stuff, links

[davids-world.com]

A couple of half-way interesting sites are linked from here. Airports, a shoe store, and the like. Many building sites.

All in all CCTV is kind of funny, but doesn't really make my day :-(

Google and web cams...

[Tempus61]

Most of the links coming up probably originated from a site thats been up for years called "Earth Cam". They have so many they have to categorize them...Google's just doing what it's supposed to finding everything...Well almost everything...L8r all...

They still wont know

[KhalidBoussouara]

Even eafter this story has been posted and many of the cameras have been slashdotted the admins still wont have a clue.

These have been known for a while. It's hardly breaking news. I visit the site soetimes. There is a lot more than cameras. There are links for usernames, passwords, databases, etc.

Interesting places

[cgenman]

a little car shop

Not entirely sure what this is

Japanese fish store

Re:Interesting places

[Selecter]

Whats cool about this is the tug of wars over the camera direction. Now that every /.er is on the controls some of the cams are doing 180's up and down and sideways as legions of internet users attempt to point the cam where they want it to go.

The car shop cam above is moving around like a whirling dervish. :D It must look wierd from the parking lot where the cam is to see it twisting about.

Re:Interesting places

[Dmala]

a little car shop

I think that may be more like a museum or a private collection than a repair shop or dealership. They appear to have a remarkable collection of vintage muscle cars.

Re:Interesting places

[Anonymous Coward]

the second one looks like a ski hill, they seem to be making snow there right now

Re:Interesting places

[Samus]

The one is a ski resort in japan called adatara. You can pan the camera all the way left and see the name of a building actually in english.

Re:Interesting places

[LWATCDR]

how about a cake store
http://68.213.208.250:3000/axis-cgi/mjpg/video.cgi

Re:Interesting places

[Legion303]

"Not entirely sure what this is"

The ski resort was interesting, but it was hard to look around with other people controlling it at the same...gimme that...fucker. /me grabs the Outer Limits tape from Acid Burn's robotic grasp [dramatization]

Guess the Location...

[Anonymous Coward]

ok, where hell is this:

http://219.96.71.76/control/userimage.html

Re:Guess the Location...

[gone.fishing]

Kinda looks like a salt mine doesn't it?

Re:Guess the Location...

[Anonymous Coward]

This one's quite good: http://193.231.72.35/view/index.shtml

Re:Guess the Location...

[Anonymous Coward]

Did you just change the admin password?

"Change your password dudes. Cohat Fish was here..."

Re:Guess the Location...

[Anonymous Coward]

Here is the music feed for that one:

http://www.radio3net.ro:8000/Live32

There is also a second camera view at
http://radio3net.102mg.ro/test2/index.php?cam2 =tru e;

fun

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey, there's even some naked people passing by this cam. Wonder where in the world that might be.

iSight

[Anonymous Writer]

I heard about this sort of security problem when CU-SeeMe first came out years ago and I'm surprised it has become an issue again. Apple's iSight has a built-in iris that closes when you twist the lens, and twisting the lens also doubles as a switch for turning the camera on and off as well as launching iChat AV. Plus, there's a little LED that lets you know when it's on. I always thought that webcams should always have a physical lens cap on them because just for that added security, and never considered getting one until the iSight came out.

Blame the Users

[eno2001]

This is not a design problem. Because if it was a design problem, then we should be abandoning TCP/IP altogether. The real problem is that the Internet was given to the masses while it was still in a "beta" or "release candidate" stage. One of the things that should have been in place before everyone and his brother got internet access is VPN. These cameras wouldn't be a problem if they were behind a firewall and the only access is via VPN or some other method of tunneling. Perhaps if the boxes were labelled "Use Behind a Secure Firewall" then this wouldn't be as common.

Where are the naked coeds?

[glrotate]

Ok, I've clicked on the links mentioned and the results from google and I'm getting weather cams and empty offices.

We all know why we jumped on this story so now somebody needes to deliver!

Re:Where are the naked coeds?

[CallMeCal]

Ha! Still, it is kinda cool & kinda creepy. Watching crashing SoCal surf; watching traffic in Stockholm. Wonder how those guys in the University of Tennessee Library would feel to know that somebody was peering over their shoulder, live, from half a continent away.

Re:Where are the naked coeds?

[jc42]

Heh. You can find a thousand or so other online cameras by using "bird nest camera" as your search terms. There are an impressive number of cameras aimed at bird nests now. Most are nest boxes, but a few (such as a couple of eagle nests) are natural nests, with the camera in another tree. Of course, most are only active during breeding season, though in the tropics, this can be most of the year.

There was a fun example listed in cruel.com a couple of years ago. Their title was "Great Tits in Germany", and the link was to a site devoted to the great tit (Parus major), a small songbird. The folks that run the site apparently have a sense of humor about the double meaning in the English version of the site, though this doesn't carry over to the German pages. Anyway, their nest cams aren't active now, since it's winter and the tits have all flown south. But they do have some nice pictures of the tits in their nesting box.

I'd bet there are some other good search terms that will turn up lists of other kinds of online cameras.

Re:search keyword - find the most interesting plac

[sam_da_mann]

No idea what this is. Exposer a bit too long?

http://209.161.173.14/axis-cgi/mjpg/video.cgi?came ra=&resolution=640x480

Re:search keyword - find the most interesting plac

[Anonymous Coward]

Well I found a secret government baby making factory.

http://kamland4pi-cam1.lbl.gov/axis-cgi/mjpg/video .cgi?camera=&resolution=640x480

Re:search keyword - find the most interesting plac

[Anonymous Coward]

http://avenches-webcam1.rcv.ch/axis-cgi/mjpg/video .cgi Amphitheatre in Switzerland. (Hurry, it's getting dark there.)

So Peeping Toms no longer just the authorities

[horza]

Of course if you put in place the elements of a Big Brother state then they will be abused. Three working for the UK authorities have been suspended for perving through a young ladies window, goodness knows how they got found out. I'm sure 99.99% of these cases are never detected.

Phillip.

Not all "secret"

[plutonium83]

Not all webcams that are found are actually "secret" most of them (if not all) are available to the public.

Re:Simple solution-THAT FAILS

[way2trivial]

owning a veo webcam, which can be searched for in similar fashion (I did, before I bought mine) I can tell you, I can't do JACK to the mini-server built into the camera. I can but give the camera a firmware update..

further, if security is the issue, there are indexes that IGNORE robots.txt file, (and I'm sure there are some that actively look for robots.txt that are exclusionary) not everyone lives by the motto "do no evil"

a spider reading the robots.txt is a nice, perfect world, internet convention, much like SMTP- and we all know how well that ended up.

Doing this on AltaVista

[telemonster]

I remember doing the exact same thing on Altavista. The default full install of IRIX on Indy workstations had a webserver that would serve images from the IndyCam perched on the granite Sony monitor in many computer labs and offices. The trick was finding ones that were enabled, or didn't have the little door shut. There were a few that were on.

Re:search keyword - find the most interesting plac

[Anonymous Coward]

This appears to be Stuttgart Airport http://195.243.185.195/ -- security risk much? I would have a problem with this being exposed on the web if I were the head of security there.

How it should be?

[digitaltraveller]

As David Brin frames it - I've stolen his opinion for this post, the key issues are transparency and egalitarianism.
The fact that we can look is not the problem. The problem with surveillance cameras is when people can look at us, but we can't look back.

Wouldn't it be better if a women going to her car can look at surveillance cameras up the block to make sure she will arrive safely? Or a citizen's watch groups can virtually patrol it's own neighbourhood?

The key problem is when a select few can control and abuse the technology and possibly enforce the law selectively. For example, corrupt cops losing video evidence of them beating someone to death.

I'm not completely sold on the idea, but it's an opinion worth considering.
Transparent Society

Re:How it should be?

[Anonymous Coward]

I am in full agreement. If we are to have very little privacy, then so should those who watch us.

Re:How it should be?

[Xofer D]

The problem with transparency is that many societies are intensely hypocritical. There are many things that a person might do in private that, if known about by the public, would lead to negative consequences for that person. One obvious example (there are a host of examples related to sex) is homosexual behaviour; it's okay by some people's measure, but not by others'. Another example might be lazing around the house naked; in a very transparent society, that's not private any more, and a man might not want people to know how big his dick is. We can take this to plausible extremes: Like sugar on your pasta in the morning? Maybe people at the office will start thinking you're a wierdo.

The bottom line is that a transparent society would have no buffer between those who want to deviate from conformity and those who use social pressure to enforce conformity. I disapprove of the actions of those conformists. Then again, would something like this would force us all to become more flexible? Forgive my pessimism, but I doubt it.

Re:How it should be?

[Anonymous Coward]

Then neither should those who watch us.

Arghhh... Grammar errors galore.

Re:How it should be?

[Anonymous Coward]

This idea originally comes from Michel Foucault, a french writer who defines power as knowledge (and gives the example of hidden observation). However, this has some problems. For example, take the case of women in many radical islamic states who are forced to wear veils. They can observe through their veil but others cannot see their facial expressions, etc.

Re:How it should be?

[Shadowlore]

Wouldn't it be better if a women going to her car can look at surveillance cameras up the block to make sure she will arrive safely? Or a citizen's watch groups can virtually patrol it's own neighbourhood?

No.

The situation you are describing leads to people *not* being on the streets. It is the lack of people on the streets that provides the opportunity for criminal activity. We've learned this through observing the actions of the people in the cities and their municipal goverment.

Often the government (police/city council) decides they are going to create a "safe area" only to find it infested with crime while other areas get cleared of it. In nearly every case it has been due to traffic patterns of people walking down the sidewalk. The more people that populate the sidewalks, the less criminal activity pays off.

When analyzed by pedestrian traffic patterns it is seen that front yards too small for children to play in in favor of community playgrounds or apartment complexes/"projects" that focus on a central courtyard disrupt the flow of people and create zones where criminal/violent behaviour flourishes. In areas where such attempts as plannign have not been used, the traffic patterns are "normal" and have a correspondingly lower crime rate.

Cameras won't solve the problem. The problem is not one of surveillance, but physical presence. Most criminals prey on the weak, or those they perceive as such. They also generally only do it when they think they can get away with it. Cameras to the street thug or rapist or such are not a deterrent becuase the perp knows the response times are not enough to actually prevent him or her from pulling it off, and of course they figure they can get away with it.

The strongest deterrent to attacks on the street is physical presence of people who might oppose the would be attacker. Thus using cameras for a potential ability to perform surveillance would lead to an increase of risk due to less people being physically on the street.

This is one of the "modern miracles" of central planning called "zoning". By mandatign a clear and signfiicant distance between people's homes and the places they need to go you eliminate walking to the local store to pick up some milk as an activity. You eliminate the use of sidewalks on a frequent basis. And in so doing you increase the chance of violent behaviour on the streets.

Further, the idea of a woman checking her cameras prior to going out to her car is a dangerous one for it's aiding and abetting a feeling of dread, fear, and low level terror. It decreases the personal feeling of freedom and increases her fear of people leading again to an increase to societal decline. The more the feeling of non-specific fear pervades, the easier it is for the attacker to be effective in shorter amounts of time.

Airport Security at its finest!

[ServeYourWorld]

http://lobbycamera2.abia.org/view/index.shtml

Re:Airport Security at its finest!

[Anonymous Coward]

Check out the monitors embedded in the desks in this office camera: http://129.119.232.137/view/index.shtml?videos=one

Re:Airport Security at its finest!

[Anonymous Coward]

slashdotted! nice going.

Re:Airport Security at its finest!

[Anonymous Coward]

Looks like its Austin-Bergstrom International. Nice...

The relevant question.

[AmoebafromSweden]

So, have anyone found any nude stuff yet?

Re:The relevant question.

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes it can be located in close proximity to a partner of you chosen persuasion.

This is news?

[Autonin]

The Axis Video Server vulnerabilies found several months ago had hackers using Google to find vulnerable cameras. Check out "Axis Video Server" for a nice list of sometimes very-controllable cams.

Nothing new here.

Plug & Play?

[Anonymous Coward]

How much of this problem is due to folks plugging the cameras in behind firewalls (thinking they are safe) and then having the cameras/drivers enable access via Plug & Play?

Re:Plug & Play?

[scottv67]

What?

What brand of firewall do you have that a device plugged into the "inside" network can request that the firewall allow inbound tcp port 80? And also request a NAT rule to connect a "real address" to the address on the internal network?

I need some examples....

-s

Not new ...

[Anonymous Coward]

I used this back in Feb of 2003 to test out Panasonic Network Cameras prior to me making a purchase...

A fresh batch

[Anonymous Coward]

Since the first round of cameras are getting slashdotted... :-)

Type this into Google:

"toshiba network camera" login

They could be anywhere...

[mpnolan]

Whoa! That guy looks familiar. Oh my god, it's ME!

Re:They could be anywhere...

[Anonymous Coward]

Is that you mounting the zebra?

Mom ...

[Anonymous Coward]

... is that you havin' fun in the car at the parking place?!

most interesting - Casino anyone?

[Enabrein]

http://24.234.255.102/axis-cgi/mjpg/video.cgi?came ra=4&resolution=352x240

Security by Slashdoting

[JeffGB]

It's simple, we just /. the cameras, that way nobody can view the cameras. Instant security!

Re:search keyword - find the most interesting plac

[Anonymous Coward]

What is this? It looks like someone knocked over the easter basket and there's one remaining egg in the mountain.

Re:search keyword - find the most interesting plac

[ianr44]

A server room? here

Daycare IT departments ?

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you kidding me?

How many daycares have IT departments?

Love the handle buddy. While you might not be a pervert, I think Ill keep my kids away from you.

And Ill lock em up in their room so you cant get to them. Or our family pets. Or....

dd

Re:search keyword - find the most interesting plac

[Anonymous Coward]

I disagree:

http://isolationcell.com/

shutter?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why not just put a shutter on the camera, maybe an activity LED. How about making USB cameras so they can be hotplugged.
Engineers have been foolproofing for eons, always a step behind the fools.

Re:shutter?

[CallMeCal]

These are all running off http/cgi servers. Seems you could just add firewall rules to allow access only from authorized IPs. I was affirmatively refused access to one camera that came up on the google search. A number of others never connected. Could be a slashdot effect, or could be the ports have been stealthed since they got spidered.

Re:shutter?

[RevAaron]

The http/cgi server is running on the camera. It's am embedded HTTP server that exists only to serve up images from the camera. There's no apache/IIS proxying between watcher and camera.

Standard Google hack

[TintinX]

Isn't this a standard Google hack as listed in O'Reilly's book.
I've had loads of fun with this one. Turning supposedly security cameras in on themselves etc.
We even have such a camera watching things at work.
"It's secure", said our IT manager (my boss - did someone mention Dilbert?).
Once home, it took me all of 10 mins to spy on my colleagues.
Has anyone seen the Kevin Rose footage on WarSpying - increasing the range of a receiver and driving around a neighborhood to spy on the X10 network cams?

Excellent point.

[Anonymous Coward]

Since you are conditioned to believe this then maybe I can interest you in some of my professional services - as a professional I am obligated to say No Problem to whatever your needs are and hand you over to our reassurance dept.
Dumbass.

Wow, quite old

[Anonymous Coward]

The idea is probably from the final talk of the 21C3 since the idea was mentioned there.

Re:search keyword - find the most interesting plac

[cHiphead]

is that an echelon station?

If Earth Cam and MapQuest had a baby....

[Persol]

Earth Cam is good, but it doesn't seem very inclusive.

The perfect solution would be something like MapQuest, with users being able to add the URL of a webcab and set it's position on a map.

The only complicated part I see here is the interactive map. Anyone know an easy/straightforward way to do it?

Hah

[XxXoldsaltXxX]

thats funny stuff. you'd think they'd password it or something

So what have we learned?

[SlayerofGods]

That the world is a pretty damn boaring place....
I'm jezze I can't even find any that have people on them.

Quick!

[1n33d4n4m3!]

chixors: http://aleksandriacamot.it.helsinki.fi/view/index. shtml?videos=one w00w00

I disagree too! "Washington Street", but where?

[Anonymous Coward]

If you reload the page, it keeps updating!

Use a router

[KalvinB]

The problem is putting the camera directly on the wire. This gives them an external IP address. Places should be using an internal network with a router to connect the cameras. That way the main systems used to watch the cameras can get on the internet and do whatever but the cameras have a 192.168.0.X or something IP that can only be accessed from the outside if the router is set up to foward the port.

Unless the cameras are intended for public viewing they should not be given an external IP.

How is this a US problem?

[Anonymous Coward]

The original statement said, "1000 cameras around the world..." Yet, you're claiming that only morons in the US are responsible?

Re:How is this a US problem?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, because Americans get on planes and go and be American in other countries...

Sheesh!

Mac / Safari

[djdavetrouble]

So,
What freakin plug-in do I need to make this work with safari? I have some voyeurism to attend to. Ok Ok I'll download mozilla, but DON'T tell me to use explorer, please. It is officially in atrocity status on macs, due to microsoft's abandonment of it.

Re:Mac / Safari

[djdavetrouble]

Here's the one i'm trying to see. the snapshot works, but not the live feed :
Grote Markt (Market square), one of the most beautiful squares in the Netherlands...
http://mozart.amadeus-hotel.com:82 /view/index.shtm l

Re:Mac / Safari

[Anonymous Coward]

Submit a bug report to Apple :)

NUCLEAR REACTOR PLANT!

[Anonymous Coward]

NUCLEAR REACTOR plant! This is pretty cool stuff!

Re:NUCLEAR REACTOR PLANT!

[Anonymous Coward]

Uh - no.

This is the protective dome of a small telescope, not a nuclear reactor. Just look at the relative sizes of the trees.

Obligatory Paris Hilton quote

[Anonymous Coward]

"Snoop does laundry? That's hot."
-- Paris Hilton, some stupid commercial

Good reason to make security cams public..

[slashmojo]

Its not such a bad idea to make security cameras publicly viewable (although allowing the public to conrtol them is another matter) for example it essentially gives you a whole world full of witnesses to whatever events may happen..

Lets say your local friendly 'protection' dude wanders in to your shop one day asking for money 'or else'.. you can either..

a) inform him that his every move is being watched by a million slashdotters..

b) pull your gun out from under the counter and blow his brains out - then tell the police there's plenty of witnesses to interview.. ;)

Re:Good reason to make security cams public..

[cookiepus]

a) inform him that his every move is being watched by a million slashdotters..

b) pull your gun out from under the counter and blow his brains out - then tell the police there's plenty of witnesses to interview.. ;)

Or you can just record and keep a day's worth of footage stored....

Re:Good reason to make security cams public..

[Animats]

About fifteen years ago, there was a jeweler in West LA, Lance Thomas who did go in for the "blow away the robbers" approach. He was a good shot, with a watch repair store in a bad neighborhood. Once or twice a year, someone would try to hold up his store. He'd blow them away, then play back the tape for the cops. Five kills in four gunfights over three years. Ruled "justifiable homicide" every time.

There was grumbling from the NAACP over this.

He's still around, repairing watches. He now sells over the Internet. He has one of the few places where you can legitimately buy a used Rolex on line.

I sell these things

[JohnnyGTO]

for a living and have always warned users to put them behind a firewall. Some just insist on giving themselves easy access to remote locations, they don't even try to setup passwords. Guess it's time for some email and a link to Slashdot.

I'd love to be a fly on some walls right now as camera owners watch there IP cameras meltdown under the pressure, many of these things can hardly support 5 - 10 users let alone Slashdot!!!

GradeSchool

[nurb432]

I guess you will be home schooling your kid for life.. As most ( soon all, 'for their safety' ) schools have cameras everywhere...

Cameras are not going away anytime soon.

True not all are publically available, but as you say 'anything can be compromised'.

Re:GradeSchool

[tob]

As most ( soon all, 'for their safety' ) schools have cameras everywhere...

Not in developed countries they don't. Yes, I mean what I say, and the aid-workers are on their way. :P

Tob

This is not new

[Anonymous Coward]

This not is a new issue. In my work I have been used these search types to test our Camera applications. Various are publics, other not.

These are various samples:

Convision-> inurl:"/fullsize.jpg?camera="
Axis-> inurl:"/axis-cgi/jpg/image.cgi"
Canon -> inurl:"/-wvhttp-01-/GetOneShot"
Pixord -> inurl:"/images<camera_id>sif"
Panasonic -> inurl:"/SnapshotJPEG?Resolution=320x240&Quality=Mo tion"
D-Link -> inurl:"/IMAGE.JPG"
JVC -> inurl:"/still.jpg"
IQinVision (Video-Server) -> inurl:"/cgi-bin/cgi-image?camid="
IQinVision (Camera) -> inurl:"/now.jpg"

Re:search keyword - find the most interesting plac

[LiquidCoooled]

If you look really carefully, you can see the Nexus in the background.
Kirk and Soran are fighting on the little tower.

This sucks.

[Horse Rotorvator JAD]

Me and many other small groups of people have been using this to gain control over cameras for close to a year now. Every once in a while there is a news story about this google trick and then for like a month afterwords the most popular cams get flooded and the frame rate drops down to like 5 frames per minute. It sucks.

I have really been dreading the day when slashdot ran a story about this because I know that it will result in many of these cams being slashdotted out of existence. Why can't I have nice things?

Better colours

[Anonymous Coward]

http://shit.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/01/09/1 411242

Are there stairs in your house?

[twistah]

Are there stairs in your house?

Hungry Hungry Hippos!

[snooo53]

Well okay, there's only one...

Hippo!

Re:search keyword - find the most interesting plac

[parvin]

That's the lamest tsunami video yet.

other devices out there too.

[Anonymous Coward]

A while back while searching for info on a xerox network printer up popped a few hits of the url's for the web interface of the printer model. I accessed 1 with the default password, could have changed any of the settings or ftp'd a document, say 3,000 pages of black and wiped out the toner and trays.
Luckily the the good side usually wins in me so I just printed out a couple pages to tell them their printer was public.

Google stopped me

[future assassin]

If I use inurl:"webcam/index.php evantually I get this message from Google Thsi only happens with the above text using .php and not inurl:/view/index.shtml With .shtml I can search forever.

Google Error We're sorry... ... but we can't process your request right now. A computer virus or spyware application is sending us automated requests, and it appears that your computer or network has been infected. We'll restore your access as quickly as possible, so try again soon. In the meantime, you might want to run a virus checker or spyware remover to make sure that your computer is free of viruses and other spurious software. We apologize for the inconvenience, and hope we'll see you again on Google.

Re:Google stopped me

[kiddailey]

lol - it would seem to me that they their automated tools are mistaking a slashdotting for an infection.

Re:Google stopped me

[Anonymous Coward]

mistaking?

Re:Google stopped me

[CallMeCal]

Ya, given that the Santy.a worm involved PHP, a slashdotting with search strings containing "*.php" might well trigger an automated security response at google.

Re:Google stopped me

[kiddailey]

Touché :)

Re:Google stopped me

[xanadu-xtroot.com]

And where do you see *php* in:

1. inurl:/view/index.shtml

?

Re:Google stopped me

[Anonymous Coward]

hope you get modded down, you illiterate gook

http://it.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=135443&ci d= 11304825

it's right there, in one of the grandparents

REFERER

[Doc Ruby]

When you run the google query, it gives you a page of results, each record containing the URL linked (by the URL) to the webcam image. So the webcam webserver log shows the Google page you linked from; all they have to do is deny access to any request with "google" (or its IP#) in the REFERER field.

However, it's trivial to download the Google results page with wget, then globally replace 'a href=' with 'img src=', and get a local page which, when loaded in a browser, shows all the available webcam images in a single page, labeled with their URL. Then the webcam admin has to invert the ACL, allowing only authorized users, rather than filter on the REFERER (which, like the IP# of the browser displaying the images, now fills the webserver logs with the browser's address).

Re:search keyword - find the most interesting plac

[iamroot]

I want one of... whatever this thing is!

http://phys9901.campus.tue.nl:50080/remote6/

But why were they crawled?

[jtara]

OK, so you can do a Google search for part of the URL and find all of the cameras that Google knows about.

But why does Google know about them in the first place?

Google (or any other indexing bot) can't find web pages that don't have a link to them. And, typically, they can only find sites that have links from other sites, or that have been "suggested" to the search engine by a user.

So, somebody put a link to the webcam in a publically-accessible page somewhere. If somebody puts a link to a security cam or a nanny cam in their home page or blog, sure, they can expect the world to be looking in!

Re:But why were they crawled?

[unladen swallow]

AFAIK,

Google does crawl the internet looking for sites. I set up a web server for myself and saw the Google robots hitting my site (until I added Google to robots.txt)

I think you are confusing Google crawlers vs. Google page rank system. Which ranks the web sites found based on the number of links on other sites it crawls. The sites with the most links on other sites get ranked higher then the ones with no links.

Re:But why were they crawled?

[NuclearDog]

Yes it does crawl it.

But, as the parent said, it will never find a site _unless_ there is a link to it.

Google does not just make up URLs and domains and try brute-forcing them, it follows links on already known-of pages. Therefore we can assume that somewhere, someone has linked to these cameras. Linking to your webcam on the internet kind of implies that it is open to the public, does it not?

ND

Re:But why were they crawled?

[Anonymous Coward]

You can use the "link:" search to find pages that link to a specific page. I tried a few, and wasn't able to find any pages that actually linked to the camera pages. Are you sure that google requires a link to the page to exist somewhere before it will index it?

Re:But why were they crawled?

[SEE]

But why does Google know about them in the first place?

Publically-accessible referrer page logs.

Let's say A.com/index.html links to B.com/index.html, and to A.com/referrerlog.html. B.com has three pages -- B.com/index.html, B.com/webcam.html, and B.com/referrerlog.html -- but B.com/index.html doesn't link to either of them. However, B.com/webcam.html has a link to B.com/index.html

How does Google wind up with a link chain to B.com/webcam.html?

Well, OwnerB checked B.com/webcam.html, and then hits the link on that page to B.com/index.html. This creates a referrer entry in B.com/referrerlog.html to the webcam page, since it logs referrers to B.com pages.

Later on, OwnerB chacks his referrer page, and sees he's been getting hits from A.com/index.html. Interested in what the link is saying about him, he clicks on the address. As he arrives at A.com/index.html, a referrer entry appears in A.com/referrerlog.html pointing to B.com/referrerlog.html.

Now Google's spider reaches A.com/index.html, and follows the link to A.com/referrerlog.html. There, it finds a link to B.com/referrerlog.html, and follows it. Now, at B.com/referrerlog.html, it finds a link to B.com/webcam.html . . . and indexes it.

Now, despite OwnerB never having (intentionally) linked to either his referrer log or his webcam site, both have been found and indexed by Google. Oops.

Re:But why were they crawled?

[rvega]

I just discovered that Google has a feature that returns a list of links to a given site. This feature returns valid results for any "real" sites I try. However, searching for the sites linking to these webcams (all those I tried, at least) comes up empty, even using the FQDNs of those that have them. Can you explain this?

Re:But why were they crawled?

[dea9]

yup, the Google toolbar. This also works the same way the Alexa toolbar does. It basically watches what sites you visit and adds them to the list to be spidered. Thus, if you have some 'secret' pages, which are protected only by url name obscurity and no inbound links, if anyone using one of those toolbars (and maybe the yahoo one too) cruises by that page it will be likely to get crawled.

Re:But why were they crawled?

[elemental23]

It's not something Google requires, per se, it's just that if there isn't a link to it somewhere, how would they find out about it? Spiders work by following links on sites they already know about. If it finds a link to another site, it will then index that site (robots.txt allowing). They don't scan random IP addresses looking for web servers.

Re:But why were they crawled?

[JWSmythe]

Say hello to your Google toolbar, any piece of Spyware that shares information with Google, or even your Gmail account. Does the largest search engine necessarly play by all the rules? Nope. They're in the business of information collection. They may **SAY** they do no evil, but they're a business, and businesses are interested in exactly one thing, profit.

Google has no way to find a site, unless you give them the information. For example, your personal server. If you didn't even use a FQDN, but you browsed to it as http://1.2.3.4/~user. Google toolbar sends that back to them. That piece of spyware you didn't know about sends it to whereever, or you've done something stupid, like have a link to Google, and they picked it up from that.

Since most people do virtual hostings, it's kinda worthless to try spidering every IP on the Internet. Sure, you could, but then you'd have a whole bunch of crap results.

Curious to see which is right? Set up a sub-domains ([something].example.com), each with a seperate logfile. Put a link to Google in one. Browse to that one, and another. Send someone @gmail.com an Email about the 3rd. Leave the 4th completely alone. I'd be willing to bet you'll see traffic on the first three. In any case, you'll know what they're watching. Then ask yourself, how much does Google really need to know about your habits.. I'd be willing to bet they have filters in place for interesting URL's, and interesting emails.

johnny - cams

[clusterf]

johnny.ihackstuff.com has been posting google cam searches for a long time now...

Congratulations

[Cat9117600]

Congrats, we have just managed to slashdot every surveillance camera in existence. A new slashdot record!

What do...

[Anonymous Coward]

Sean Fanning, an anonymous reader, and Paris Hilton's ex-boyfriend have in commonng? They're all too utterly and completely fucking stupid to keep shit to themselves.

Shortcut

[Tablizer]

If someone tells us, "Get outside more", does this count?

Re:Shortcut

[Eric604]

If someone tells us, "Get outside more", does this count?

it most certainly does not motivate to go outside. There's hardly onyone outside..

Re:Shortcut

[Anonymous Coward]

I think the reason that nobody is outside is because they are all inside staring at their computers on these web cam sites.

Delightfully Voyeuristic

[CodeBuster]

Some of the things that these people do in those computer labs are absolutely hysterical. Do they even know that they are being watched? To bad that most of the girls that one finds in the computer labs are of the decidedly more nerdy variety.

Re:Delightfully Voyeuristic

[Anonymous Coward]

Mind giving us any pointers to such webcams? So far I've only managed to find cams pointing at boring stuff like parking lots, parks, empty storage rooms etc. I have yet to see a living a person actually moving around.

Cameras you can aim?! Uh oh...

[kiddailey]

I guess that there will be a few broken cameras when the admins all go back to work on Monday.

known!

[blackomegax]

sad thing is i have known about this for YEARS and am surprised something so obvious (searching for the page title of an axis cam on google) didnt take longer to be public knowlage. if anyone cares what started it all, its GSU's axis webcam on one of their buildings.

just a question

[adeydas]

Why does the surviellence cameras connect their feeds to the Internet? They can easily keep it within their LAN and forget the worry about other people seeing it. Also why can't they password protect the site so that only authorised personnel can see it?

As if

[b00m3rang]

As if a camera with a built-in web server has the capability to filter by referer.

Re:search keyword - find the most interesting plac

[AmbyVoc]

No, that was the one after the tsunami hit.

Just remember One thing

[Anonymous Coward]

If you can see your webcam's feed remotely it means that other people can see it as well

An interesting note on privacy...

[Anonymous Coward]

SOMETHING AWFUL DOT COM!

Re:search keyword - find the most interesting plac

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow, this guy really sucks at pool. I wonder if he has any clue hundreds of geeks on the internet are making fun of him?

http://thepoolcam.dyndns.tv/axis-cgi/mjpg/video.cg i

Re:search keyword - find the most interesting plac

[FyRE666]

Ok, I'm on here, and I can see 10 other people using it too - wonder if anyone there have noticed the camera spazzing around yet? ;-)

MUST

[Doc Ruby]

This entire operation is based on the fact that this is a single camera brand/model-type, with a built-in webserver, and a standard URL template for the "get image" CGI that can be Googled. Several of those cameras implement the standard Basic authentication required in HTTP; there's no reason to think they can't also filter by REFERER, a much simpler operation, also provided by supporting the HTTP spec.

Re:MUST

[b00m3rang]

I'm not saying it isn't possible for the hardware to do it, I've just never seen any with that much detail in the administrative interface.

http://80.97.109.10:40010/

[Anonymous Coward]

http://80.97.109.10:40010/

Dude stop stealing that money!

Re:http://80.97.109.10:40010/

[Anonymous Coward]

F*ck! That kid closed the store five minutes early. I'm gonna fire his ass tomorrow!

:^)

Heh,

[Refrozen]

I discovered this a few weeks ago, and I found one that had sound AND I COULD CONTROL in some crowded resurant somewhere in Japan. I moved it back and forth, and finally got someones attention, they were talking to the camera, it was hilarious.

a bank?

[Anonymous Coward]

http://134.84.240.219/view/index.shtml

Slashdoted cameras

[jon_oner]

The first three pages of hits in Google can't load. It is because the Cameras themselves have been slashdotted!!! what is next? slashdotted pet feeders?

Slashdottted security cameras

[Donny Smith]

Couple of them were dead.

Until today it would have been impossible to comprehend the meaning of "my security cameras have been slashdotted".
Well, that is what some of security camera owners will be saying tomorrow morning.

Are they slashdotted?

[dimss]

Looks like most cams are effectively slashdotted right now...

What's the problem?

[Animats]

Other than overload if someone starts archiving all that stuff, what's the problem? Most surveillance camera output is really boring.

• Some server room somewhere.
• Another server room somewhere else.
• Yet another server room.
• Still another server room, with lousy housekeeping.
• Elevator doors somewhere.
• Horse in a stall.

There are cameras in retail stores. Also boring.

• Trophies and ribbons
• Heating, ventilating, and air conditioning equipment.
• Retail arcade.

But there are some pretty pictures available. Most of these look like vacation spots.

• Rooftop view of ocean with palm trees.
• The beach at Nice
• New England winter
• Beach on the Gulf of Mexico
• Climbing wall
• Snowboarding resort.

so long to figure this out?

[Anonymous Coward]

hello?

its january 2005..... Google has been indexing the web for years now...why has it taken so long for someone to think of submitting this as 'security' or 'news'??

You've been able to search URLs for common lines for ages...especially from anything thats been linked from a sites pages!

I'd be more worried by the fact that there are multiple exploits for those AXIS cameras out there - and default admin names and passwords!

anyone who is bored can now do inurl: searches for your badly installed switches that have their web services linked to (really guys you should do "no service http" on your configs!) CISCOS and HP's both have easily identified URLs - fun for a Sunday night? maybe, but thats just lame.

localised search?

[jago25_98]

If surveillance is present and justified then it shouldn't matter if we all can see it right if there's nothing to hide? ;)

How can we search my locality other than site:.uk for example?

Anyone found any UK webcams? Best I've seen so far is an Irish one.
One of my local town centre would be handy!

Re:Google Links to Web cams - crime

[saskboy]

First take a screen shot with print screen.

Record the IP, and the time on paper.

Verify what country from the IP. Contact the local authorities by phone or email and send the details.

based on ten minutes of googling

[justins]

Panasonic could mitigate some of the damage they've done with their camera's stupid default features by not accepting connections referred to them by google. Their viewnetcam.com site seems to be hosting a lot of vulnerable cameras.

Re:based on ten minutes of googling

[CaptRespect]

" Panasonic could mitigate some of the damage they've done with their camera's stupid default features by not accepting connections referred to them by google."

Or people can stop being stupid and setup a firewall.

Firewall. It's nothing new. It's for when you install something that might have a flaw, which is everything.

Most of these pages seem like internet sites. So what's the big deal if people connect to it through the internet? Why would you put up a site and then be shocked that people can see it?

Re:based on ten minutes of googling

[justins]

Or people can stop being stupid and setup a firewall.

There should be some kind of moderation setting called "so redundant the poster does not deserve to live."

Re:search keyword - find the most interesting plac

[temojen]

Whatever it was, they now appear to have pointed the camera at the big dipper.

Watching a clock tick

[killa62]

http://axis.axiscam.net/view/index.shtml I win! I've been watching this for hours.

This is awesome...

[Cryptnotic]

Meanwhile you probably secretly fantasize about having sex with underage cheerleaders yourself...

In case anyone didn't notice, danila looked up the posting history of FerretFrottage and found a post to use as incriminating evidence against him. This is a rather advanced flaming technique. I am quite impressed. Well done.

Re:This is awesome...

[Reziac]

*I* noticed .... and was inspired to check my own posting history. Gods know what sort of pervert I've been while I wasn't looking! :)

Re:This is awesome...

[ErikTheRed]

Meanwhile you probably secretly fantasize about having sex with underage cheerleaders yourself...

In case anyone didn't notice, danila looked up the posting history of FerretFrottage and found a post to use as incriminating evidence against him. This is a rather advanced flaming technique. I am quite impressed. Well done.

Technically, FerretFrottage is only flaming if [s]he is male, and so are the aforementioned cheerleaders.

Re:This is awesome...

[Anonymous Coward]

But the reference seems to be to NFL cheerleaders, who are not I imagine overage - though if FerretFrottage's wife notices that posting, he's in for a heap o trouble.

Re:This is awesome...

[eraserewind]

Awesome, or kind of sad that someone would go to so much bother just to flame some guy on slashdot.

Old news

[NuclearDog]

I remember sitting playing around with some of the cameras near the beginning of last year.

I'm suprised someone just finally noticed this now >_>

ND

Re:search keyword - find the most interesting plac

[cephus440]

http://cafecam.heerenvanbeijerland.nl/view/index.s html?videos=one

Great, you just Slashdotted the security cameras

[payndz]

Now the terrorists will get through undetected and destroy us all!

The cotas.net helpdesk

[pongo000]

Must be a slow day...check out what they're watching on the left-hand monitor!

http://webcam1.cotas.com.bo/view/view.shtml

Re:search keyword - find the most interesting plac

[Anonymous Coward]

http://209.52.239.29/axis-cgi/mjpg/video.cgi?camer a=&resolution=320x240

when i went here there was a flying boat lined up in the shot, if there's not one there when you go then the person has carried out the promise in the title of the web cam of stealing it!

Firewall ... anyone?

[CaptRespect]

OMG! LOL!!!1 I setup my network camera on my computer and now it can be viewed on the internet! I guess wtf? I figured it would magicly know which computers should be able to connect to it! GOOGLE IS EVIL for peep at my camera that is on the internet that any 1 can connect to!!!!12

Of course if people would just setup a firewall this thing would never happpen. There are flaws with all kinds of software. Why would you just let programs randomly listen on port 40010?

Marina- People Moving

[Anonymous Coward]

http://204.49.60.246/view/index.shtml

Re:search keyword - find the most interesting plac

[shish]

a b - a pair of cameras in some storage place, and you can get them to point at eachother :D

Locker Room?!?!?!?!

[cephus440]

http://213.189.5.245/view/index.shtml?videos=one

Re:Locker Room?!?!?!?!

[Quixote]

Nope, server room. Raised floor at the bottom, racks on both sides, with holes (covered) to bring up cabling.

Re:search keyword - find the most interesting plac

[Keith McClary]

Midnight in Spain looks just like midnight where I live.

Check it again in 12 hrs.

Re:Speaking of IP cam, why isn't there higher res.

[appleLaserWriter]

Bandwidth is the answer. A camera at 640x480 at 30fps has to have compression turned *way* up to make it out the typical home user's 256k or 512k of upstream bandwidth.

Next, the phillips TriMedia chip and competitors support real-time compression at 640x480 and are available in volume. Chips that can suport compression at higher resolutions aren't made in volume, so are much more expensive.

Finally, if you need high resolution, just switch to a telephoto lens. If you need to look at several areas of detail, use several cameras.

Google is a privacy nightmare !

[Anonymous Coward]

wow, this ought to be picked up by the mainstream media. So anyone can use Google now to watch someone else's online webcam. Google search is now used for spying on people, watch their webcams, dig up stuff on them which they don't want to share, the evildoers can use Google to dig up confidential info and then use that to harm us. This is pure evil, and i won't be surprised if the lawsuits start coming in from privacy conscious and the ACLU types against Google, followed by govt. regulations. This could be the biggest court drama of the decade. Google will surely be pulled down sooner or later.

Re:Google is a privacy nightmare !

[Tandoori Haggis]

You can use a knife and fork to eat with or you can assault somebody with them. Should they be banned?

Google is a tool!

Doors have locks to keep intruders out. If you choose to leave your door unlocked don't be too suprised if an opportunist walks in.

Thats reality. Twas ever thus.

The dumbed down culture of ignorance and litigation has a lot to answer for. Don't fall into the trap.

Didn't /. cover google hacking previously?

[Spy der Mann]

Argh can't find the link. Anyway, Wired news a year ago: http://www.wired.com/news/infostructure/0,1377,578 97,00.html

so, the news is that more applications were vulnerable to spidering. DOH! I mean, sure, give away you surveillance webcam access without a login. What were these guys thinking about?

This is old news

[Anonymous Coward]

I found this guys web site over 2 years ago:

wonder.I.am

X-Ray Conditioning

[mattisbusy]

Wonder what this is... some type of X-RAY screen? http://x12b-cams.nsls.bnl.gov/indexFrame.shtml?new style=One&cam=4

Re:X-Ray Conditioning

[PhraudulentOne]

Yeah I was checkin that out too... I also came across one that was a continuous electric beam of some sort - it had the output from the particle accelerator and had another camera watching "scientists" using the device

Here is one in Tucson, AZ

[Anonymous Coward]

http://198.182.65.150/sample/LvAppl/lvappl.htm

I think it is looking down N. Stone Ave. From W. Alameda St. to W. Pennington St. and beyond.

is this legal?

[aka_big_wurm]

So is it leagal to check out these cams or will the FBI come and knock on our doors?

Re:is this legal?

[dalmiroy2k]

There is no password or disclaimer to enter the "webcam site". Since it doesn't ask you for a password then I assume it's public, If not you couldn't enter the site by just typing their IP.

Voyeur

[Alien Venom]

This brings a whole new meaning to voeyur porn.

this might make a good game

[bbdd]

you might be able to put together a decent game trying to figure out what the camera is showing.

whoever gets it first wins some points. more points if they can do it using only the camera picture data, less points for each other source they have to consult (google searches, web sites, traceroutes, keyhole, etc) to figure it out.

might be a fun challenge. like geo-caching in reverse. instead of finding a location and going to it, you are already there and to figure out where you are.

Re:Google Links to Web cams link update

[saskboy]

The Ticketpro office

Re:search keyword - find the most interesting plac

[hacker]

I dub thee: LENSCAP !

RABBITS & WEBBITS (more search tricks)

[Brazilian Invasion]

http://www.searchlores.org/rabbits.htm Catching the rabbit's ears & pulling files out of the hat Advanced Web searching tricks by VVAA (Various Authors)

This guy was sitting next to a cam

[Anonymous Coward]

He was struggling to control the cam and just got up and walked away.

http://24.11.251.162:92/#

Stupid people come in all nationalities

[gad_zuki!]

>every moron in the U.S.

Most of the one's I've found are either Japanese or in the Netherlands. Some links here.

It's not that frickin' hard!

[cjsnell]

If I were manufacturing these things, I'd load each with its own randomly-generated default username and password and put these on a big yellow-and-red sticker on the camera, impossible to miss.

Re:It's not that frickin' hard!

[JWSmythe]

You haven't dealt with many users, have you? :) That big sticker is either going to be completely ignored, or the first thing that gets yanked off and thrown away. Or worse, some rocket scientist will install all of them in places that are virtually inaccessable, and not write down the passwords first.

I did have some Axis boxes at one point. They were the much older ones.. They had a bad habit of dying.. I was smart about it though, I put everything on a private network, and wrote my own software solution to get the feed from the camera to distribution servers. The Axis box had exactly one connection, and the distribution servers had tens of thousands. I tried other solutions, and was pretty happy with some regular PC's, cheap capture cards and USB devices, and more of my own software.

Re:search keyword - find the most interesting plac

[iamroot]

That's the X12B at Brookhaven National Laboratory, not a storage place. Its used for X-ray crystallography. It's apparently scheduled for conditioning until next weekend though.

see here:
http://www.px.nsls.bnl.gov/x12b_info.html

The webcams are to check on it remotely.

Security vs. Stupidity-PHB.

[Anonymous Coward]

"Well, it's really just another example of engineers doing the job right, only to then have a PHB of some ilk tell them..."

This assumes that all bad decisions are the result of a PHB's intervention . Some is simple ignorance (something we all are guilty of at one time or another).

Ah, America

[ScrappyLaptop]

...notice that her genitals are pixelated out; seeing them, according to the FCC and most of the religious right, would be...obscene.

Re:Ah, America

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry to crush your wet "US religious right conspiracy" dreams this time, but Tubgirl is Japanese porn. No pubic hair = anything goes.

Stuttgart Airport

[plimsoll]

I recognize this one: Stuttgart International Airport. D'oh (auf Deutsch)!

ofn

[bonezed]

we were playing with these cameras ages ago

Ouch! Ferrot got SERVED!!

[Anonymous Coward]

n/m

So cute

[JoelMeow]

This one shows what appears to be a pet store in Japan. The puppy in front is pretty cute.

Precursor to mobile robot with cam

[Walt Dismal]

it would be cool if some future Robosapien product were Internet-enabled and could run around sending video AND be remote-controlled. Completely mobile, with Wi-fi. OR if someone would build a hack like that.

In case anyone didn't notice...

[doc_traig]

...Crypnotic also looked up the posting history of FerretFrottage to see if danila had looked up the posting history of FerretFrottage, and upon finding a link, very excitedly posted the parent as a rather advanced means of showing off. I'm not that impressed, but well done nonetheless.

Meanwhile, I'm the only one here who has not yet looked up the posting history of FerretFrottage, although it is apparently a popular thing to do...

Try googling these:

[12421]

WebCams:
inurl:/view/index.shtml
inurl:/LvAppl.h tm
inurl:"ViewerFrame?Mode="

Other fun stuff:
"phpMyAdmin" "running on" inurl:"main.php"
inurl:ipsec.secrets -history -bugs
"# Dumping data for table (username|user|users|password)" -site:mysql.com -cvs

[One query per line]

Password

[Cliff.Braun]

I would think that if these people are too lazy to set their camera's up properly they may not have changed the login either, does anyone know what the default login, and password is to the Axis cameras?

Re:Password

[dalmiroy2k]

AXIS: username: root passoword: pass

Clarification requested

[leonbrooks]

Was the sig intended to be related to the post?

Re:Clarification requested

[djdavetrouble]

no, its a futurama quote. Bender steals leela's ring, and glosses it over with that comment.

That would be...

[leonbrooks]

...and engineering lab at the University of Queensland, making the number (international) +61-7-3346-9705 or in Oz (07)3346-9705. I'm sure they'll get a blast from your call. (-:

OT: Re:Ah, America

[ScrappyLaptop]

Thanks for pointing out the origin of tubgirl. I'm no conspiracy theorist; just trying to make a point about obscenity being relative. Actually, you help me make that point if you are serious about the pubic hair. Could you expand on that a little, please?

Re:OT: Re:Ah, America

[xanadu-xtroot.com]

Yes, he's quite serious about the pubic hair thing. I don't have any URL's handy to show (since I'm not into that stuff...), but, yes; in Japan the pr0n is indeed classified different depending on whether there's pubic hair or not. Clearly, "tubgirl" has no pubic hair, thus that image (in Japan) is "legal". It's an interesting world. folks...

Yes!

[tommyth]

Finally, voyeur sites for those of us with a fetish for boring things!

exploit

[Anonymous Coward]

do "AXIS 2100 Network Camera /view/view.shtml" into google then

http://ip-of-cam//admin/admin.shtml (note the 2 slashes)

to get to admin area

Aw crap!

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm in Australia, it's 10:51 am over here, and as you can guess, almost all of the web cams will be in a part of the world that is dark right now, so this little execise was not very interesting for me. Although some of the pix were quite eerie: e.q. an empty office full of cubicles and flatscreen monitors. Almost felt like I was experiencing "Dawn of the Dead" live... Yeah, I need to get a life.

Some kind of bakery?

[Anonymous Coward]

http://belba.dyndns.org:805/

Penguin exhibit

[Anonymous Coward]

http://163.29.163.13/indexFrame.shtml?newstyle=Qua d

Bonus Points

[halcyon1234]

For the first person who physically visits one of these cameras and posts a sign in front of it that reads "FSCK YOU /. VOYERS!"

Still OT: Re:Ah, America

[ScrappyLaptop]

Thanks. Interesting, yes, but not so odd when you consider that we Americans appear downright terrified, yet fascinated with women's breasts. Show the top, sides or bottom of your breasts and it's sexy. Display an obvious nipple projection and it's sexy. Show areola skin or worse yet, an actual nipple(!) and you've crossed the line. We actually project quite a few such dichotomies...

Ski Slope

[maxkennedy]

Randomly tried one from a google slope and found a ski slope with people skiing. How neat.

Re:Ski Slope

[maxkennedy]

http://210.91.86.38/view/index.shtml

Here's a view into a typical British ISP

[Le Marteau]

enta.net

Yeah, baby! That's my kind of ISP. Looks like some real 'leet dudez run that shop. Only thing missing is pizza boxes.

because I _did_ notice

[contagious_d]

Well, I have not posted in months, but I made this post as an advanced form of recognition of doc traig's recognition of the advanced flaming of ferrets, followed by advanced excited showing off of said advanced ferret flaming. I recognize your superior (some might say advanced) recognition of the practice of ferret flaming and the advanced showing off thereof, doc.

Slashdot says, reality is:

[Anonymous Coward]

apparently without their owners' knowledge.

Actually, at least 20 of the cameras _do_ have their owners knowledge. They belong to a chain of laundromats in southwestern Japan, one camera per location. The idea is that before heading off with your laundry, you have a quick look at the cams to see how busy they are, and decide which place to go to (or maybe not to go at all..)

Of course, this is slashdot, I probably shouldn't have said anything because now 50 sickos will be running off and watching young japanese folk do their laundry.

Public webcams

[warlocke]

I'm surprised that it's gotten this far without somebody mentioning science fiction.

H. Beam Piper's stories included a standard trope, in which there were many publicly available cameras in various places. "Telescreen" users used their output instead of wallpaper images, and Pappy Jack used surveillance images of a forest fire to scare Little Fuzzy.

Hey, slashdotters! Who wants to step up and provide that service?

Regards,
Ric

PHPMyAdmin, Alexa

[Garridan]

With google, I've found a number of installations of PHPMyAdmin on people's websites. If you don't know, PHPMyAdmin is a direct interface to a MySQL server through a powerful, easy-to-use interface. In other words, if somebody looked hard enough, they could snag credit cards from online retailers pretty easily.

Alexa is another big danger. At the company I worked at, my boss was fond of browsing the company's admin site with a browser with Alexa installed. On a few pages of the admin site were html links which were used to delete things. Sure enough, when Alexa spidered our admin site, it followed each and every delete link. Goodbye cookie-based authentication, hello IP-based!

The best link ever!

[halcyon1234]

OMFG:

ICE CREAM!!!!

If i am not mistaken

[floydman]

This could be done in any other web search engine, not only google.
Here are hotbot results. The first result is a webapge with links to most of the cams...

Besides searching for a part of the URL is a very old trick in search engines, any search engine theortically should do the same thing.

Check This

[Lord Flipper]

http://www.i-hacked.com/Computer-Components/Softwa re-Internet/Finding-Online-Webcams!.html

Slashdot infection/camera security

[OhHellWithIt]

lol - it would seem to me that they their automated tools are mistaking a slashdotting for an infection.

Actually, in a way, the Slashdot effect could indeed be considered an infection. About ten years ago, before there were email viruses that I was aware of, rumors of email viruses that do terrible things (that were not then possible) were circulated by credulous people trying to spread the warning. One such notice was passed to a government client of my then-employer with great solemnity at a meeting, without having been circulated into the engineering department where I worked. When I finally saw the notice and explained why it was not applicable in the client's environment, I explained how the REAL virus was the email notice in question, and that the computer it ran on was the human brain.

Now, years later, these sorts of viruses are all over the place (see snopes.com), as are the occasional "bugs" like this one, in which an unintended result occurs. Of course, "programming" the human mind, by introducing data that will yield a predicted result, is as old as the human (or proto-human) mind. I submit that being skilled in this is potentially far more powerful than anything we code for a computer.

FWIW, it's not like all of these cameras have gaping security holes. At least one, the AXIS 211 claims to have the capability of setting a password on the web interface. (I don't have one to verify this.) As far as I know, Google only follows publicly accessible links in its indexing, so the fact that we can look at the cameras isn't really the fault of Google or the camera vendor. If it's a violation, it's the failure of the camera's owner to read the fine manual.

Danila: the underage cheerleader fantasizin idiot.

[FerretFrottage]

NFL cheerleaders dumbass..RTFP next time...I guess you're the one that now not so secretly fanasizes about underage cheerleaders.

Axis camera default authentication

[mjeppsen]

From the Axis support docs...
User: root
Password: pass

-MJ

Favorite quote

[The_REAL_DZA]

Very last line from the "warspying" article linked-to from within the Register article:

"The problem is, if the cops take an interest in you while you're doing something like this, the only way to get out of the situation is to admit that you're a dork," says MWD. "I'd almost rather be taken back to the station."

Some Store

[PhraudulentOne]

Here is some store where you can watch people try to shoplift. Pretty cool.

Re:Danila: the underage cheerleader fantasizin idi

[Anonymous Coward]

You know you'd like it if a 17 year old skirt were riding your rod.

Well done?!? You're as bad as that stupid ferret!

[Anonymous Coward]

Putting a concerned parent down because they care about their child is bad enough. Using some misconstrued reference as "incriminating evidence" to flame that individual is APPALLING!

It's not well done. It's RUDE & INTOLERABLE! It's people who act like you and the ferret who make us parents paranoid about what might happen to our kids.