Wi-Fi Enabled Digital Cameras Easily Exploitable

An anonymous reader writes with some news that might make you think twice before getting a network-enabled camera. From the article: "Users' desire to share things online has influenced many markets, including the digital camera one. Newer cameras increasingly sport built-in Wi-Fi capabilities or allow users to add SD cards to achieve them in order to be able to upload and share photos and videos as soon as they take them. But, as proven by Daniel Mende and Pascal Turbing, security researchers with ERNW, these capabilities also have security flaws that can be easily exploited for turning these cameras into spying devices. The researchers chose to compromise Canon's EOS-1D X DSLR camera and exploit each of the four ways it can communicate with a network. Not only have they been able to hijack the information sent from the camera, but have also managed to gain complete control of it."

Comments

Re:Editors are people who EDIT!

[YrWrstNtmr]

We can achieve cameras by adding SD cards? What?

We can achieve adding Wi-Fi capabilities to cameras by adding an SD card, yes.
Eye-fi. And yes, mine works quite well.

Re:Things that don't need to be connected to the i

[Ford Prefect]

It takes about 10 seconds to remove the memory card and plug it into a tablet/laptop/whatever. Unless you need photos uploaded essentially as you shoot them (which I suspect woudn't work very well at the same time you were taking new pictures), there is no reason to have the camera able to connect to a network.

You're kind of assuming the photographer is right next to the cameras - professional wireless whatsits (e.g. Nikon and Canon) are intended for full remote control of multiple cameras. So at a sports event, a photographer might have one down behind the goal with a wide-angle lens, another pointing at the other goal, etc. etc. etc. - all uploading to the photo agency for up-to-the-moment imagery. Newspapers needed things soon, the internet needs it now.

Still decidedly embarrassing if they are so easily compromised, of course.

Not unexpected but...

[m.dillon]

Not unexpected, but its kinda hard to take candid photos from a hijacked camera when the lens cap is on. And those WIFI systems are not generally left on anyhow.

I don't understand why they used a 1Dx though, which would require an external WIFI adapter to even have a WIFI capability. I would be more interested in penetration testing something like the Canon 6D which has the WIFI built-in. I fully expect there to be holes, Canon's WIFI software has always been quite primitive and even the new stuff is still quite primitive.

But if we make enough noise and Canon will fix it in a software update.

Currently I only use the 6D's built-in WIFI to be able to review pictures in-camera from an android tablet... quite a useful feature. I'm not particularly worried about hijacking there since the Camera's WIFI transmitter has rather limited range. And most of the time the WIFI is turned off anyway since it eats the battery otherwise.

-Matt