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

Excellent!

[ColdWetDog]

Now it should be simple to make a smartphone app to control the camera. Before, you had to get the API from the manufacturer, sign an NDA, often pay money and then pour through the poorly documented mess.

Progress!

Toxic content

[Anonymous Coward]

Hijacking thousands of vacation pictures may prove fatal to the pirates who steal them, contracting terminal boredom. Meanwhile, spies and celebrities should avoid using cameras with remote access vulnerabilities

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

[Anonymous Coward]

Interesting, but the article itself mentions a camera body that's meant for professionals who are handed contracts to deliver photos within a time frame following events. (most MAJOR sporting events the photos need to be uploaded from the camera back to a central repo within 4 hours of the event, so they can go to print for the following morning. )

Saving a few minutes here and there is KEY to getting ahead in that industry.

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

[fustakrakich]

On the contrary. When recording the police, it's best to upload live, so when they steal your camera, they don't get the footage.

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.