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Ask Slashdot: Security Monitoring Company That Accepts VPN Video Feeds?
mache writes: My cousin is finishing up a major remodel of his home in Houston and has installed video cameras for added security. At my suggestion, he wired up all the cameras to be on a separate VLAN that only uses wired Ethernet and has no WiFi access. Since the Houston police will only respond to security alarms if the monitoring company is viewing the crime in progress, he must arrange for the video feed to available to a security monitoring company. I told him that the feed should use VPN or some other encrypted tunneling technique as it travels the Internet to the monitoring company and we proceeded to try and find a company that supported those protocols. No one I have talked to understands the importance of securing a video feed and everyone so far blithely suggests that we just open a port on his home router. Its frustrating to see such willful ignorance about Internet security. Does anyone know of a security monitoring company that we can work with that has a clue?
There is a degree of understanding for why a security company might not want to use your VPN solution; if they have to monitor a lot of customers' cameras then they'd have to have a lot of different VPN clients running that might cause problems when the networks overlap private IP addresses.
Configure your firewall to allow their IP address range to port-translate to the NVR's IP and port(s). ACL-off your security VLAN from your user VLAN(s), and vice-versa, and allow only the correct ports through from your user network(s) to the NVR.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
If those companies want a port open on the router, can you lock the port to only the IP addresses that that company would be using?
That should be fairly standard on most of the firewall/routers available today.
VPN may be too heavy weight a solution. VPN is used when different sites [like branch offices of say a bank in a city] want to appear as though they are co-located in a single site. In this video surveillance use-case, it's just that you need to send the data one-way securely from point A to B. Just using an L7 secure TCP [like ssh tunneling] or using L3 IPsec like protocol should be sufficient. May be there are dedicated devices that do this.. or you may be able to run a script/software in the PC in the home which acts as a middle-man doing this tunneling and sending out of the data to the remote server. Of course the other end should be able to receive and do the necessary decryption.
No, he wants an encrypted tunnel to the security company. Not to a third-parrty proxy.
Why does "over a VPN" mean "indeterminate location"?
I used to connect to work via a VPN and it never happened that I was going "like, what's all this shit?". Well, the one time...
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
You and your cousin need to get a life and stop worrying about highly optimizing the design of security systems that have almost no practical value. The reality is for most users, 99.9% of the security value of their system mostly comes from the visual appearance of the camera as a deterrent factor.
What's wrong with a port forward?
Get them to tell you THEIR static IP, and only apply port forwarding from their address to your internal VLAN.
Problem solved.
Have to do it all the time for telephony, CCTV, remote software support, etc. I let them have a port-forward but only if:
a) they give me their source IP (I get the asked the same when I set up VPN's etc. anyway, so everyone does this!)
b) they only get one set of port-fowards to the internal system
c) I reserve the right to cut that connection off for 99.9% of the time until they actually NEED to do something. They ring me up, I open up JUST THAT PORT to JUST THAT IP, then they have to tell me when they are finished.
It makes it much easier to manage, to log, and to control your devices.
Nobody sensible opens up any port to the world unless they have a public-facing service on that port and have secured it properly (e.g. email, web, vpn). But "port-forward" does not mean you let the world into it.
And if the attackers know and can spoof the IP of your remote support, then you're in bigger trouble anyway! That's not the kind of attacker that you're going to be able to easily defend against. But with a plain port-forward, all they'll get (if you've done it properly) is into the VLAN and the cameras, not your systems.
And, guess what. The only device that traverses several VLANs should really be your gateway anyway. There's no point VLANning off and then having everything sit on all the VLANs. So you might as well just have the gateway port-forward and then all the config is on one device.
(Not only that, VPN setup like you suggest is a pain in the arse for most people anyway. If you have a hundred customers, with a hundred VPN's, it quickly becomes stupendous to put them all on 24/7, because of IP subnets stomping over each other and all sorts of confusions. That's before you get into the million-and-one variations of VPN and VPN settings and managing certs and credentials).
You should have the Axis security suite or find one of their partners to install it for you, then some company might take you seriously. Once you get that contract, you can specify anything you want and pay accordingly. I've done IPSec lines for some of their customers, but you could be paying $10k/year easily to maintain a few camera recordings which are totally useless in actual protection or prosecution (unless the cops get extremely lucky with an extremely dumb criminal, they won't be looking for that one person or even recognize them when they get arrested on another charge).
But for home or small business, this is laughable, your camera's won't do anything, they will barely be able to see any silhouettes especially at night (unless you buy a $1000 camera, the 100' IR LED cameras all wash out the image due to reflection within the housing, and yes, I have tried a number of them). Your city doesn't require any camera for monitoring by police. You do need a permit and so does your alarm company. Perhaps your alarm company told you that but they are just trying to up sell you their camera system. https://www.houstonburglaralar...
You can do a DIY alarm system with a cheap alarm monitoring service for ~$500 (Honeywell Vista with a few sensors and remotes) and $5-15/month for the monitoring service (wired or wireless). You could hook up ZoneMinder into your Honeywell as well with an RPi or whatever, but make sure you understand the false alarm fees your city levies. Some city codes also require you to hook up at least one wired CO and smoke detector if you do get a system so you should calculate all that in, other codes require wired CO and smoke detectors on every level during renovations.
Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
It must suck to be able to read but unable to understand what you read.
Wires can be cut.
... and radio can be jammed....
Radio can be jammed.....
Good-bye
VPN in modern slang times is generally used by people in one country trying to access restricted content in another (say copyright restrictions not allowing AU to view US shows on Hulu or something) or to obfuscate the original of the data being transmitted (dissident materiel or perhaps illegal to some extent material). The practical application of a VPN (secure tunneling access to a remote network like work access) seems to be forgotten by those using it for other reasons or the other reasons are more prevalent in certain circles that the reasoning doesn't flow as quickly.
I used to play a game online and people were constantly complaining about having to find a VPN. Turned out their ability to access the game came at a time there would be almost no one online in their country so they used a VPN to fake their location in an area where a lot of people would be online and had a better overall game experience. The game attempted to route you to servers in your time zone to prevent culture clashes and whatever which lead to a lot of boring sessions in odd hours evidently.
" camera or DVR should be accessible form teh internet and no video feed should traverse the internet without encryption"
Just NO. Not everything needs to be encrypted. In lots of cases it jsut adds bloat to whatever it is you are trying to do. I absolutely believe companies should make better devices, but in the end its up to US to use the vast tool chest we have available to us to make up for these shortcomings. Dont force obfuscation where its not needed so that you dont have to think.
Good-bye
I certainly understand the need to secure the video, fully encrypted, of my home. But I'd be willing to have it unencrypted, and fully open in fact, during a break-in. It's a big call for help for anyone looking, and it really ought not be that often. And anyone whe'd stage a robbery to see the footage as recon for next time, well, that sounds foolish.
So, while not perfect, why not switch to unencrypted during alarm scenarios?
The political types of the internet disagree. The common view there is that absolutely everything should be encrypted - because it you only encrypt what you want kept secret, it stands out like a blinking neon 'something dodgy going on here' sign. The overhead of encryption is very slight with modern hardware, and getting more so all the time.
Others have pointed some of these things out but let me spell it out in big letters.
OP started out by telling the security company "I want a VPN." He then came to /. to say to us "where can I find someone that will do a VPN." /. world help you; don't state what you think the solution is and why nobody will do it. There's a good reason they won't -- it's the wrong answer.
The problem is that a VPN is the wrong tool. When you have a problem state the problem and let the
VPNs are used to link separate private networks across a different (public, non-private, or other private) network. That's not what OP needs here.
What OP needs is end to end encryption to ensure the camera video is visible only to the security company -- not the Internet at large.
Some suggestions have been floated by other posters above me, and to summarize they are as follows. Note that the first by itself won't encrypt but any two of these together gurantee both AUTHENTICATION and ENCRYPTION, which is what OP wants.
- IP source address filter. If the connection doesn't come from the security monitoring company it doesn't allow the connection.
- HTTPS encryption with authentication
- IPsec tunneling
E
This is a good way to not end up with service.
For every problem, there is at least one solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.
Custom worthless crap?
Bwhahaha ... No security company wants to deal with some jackass that thinks they know all about it but was too fucking stupid to think about how it might interoperate before he started and now he's shocked that people have no interest in dealing with him when he walks in the door telling they run their business wrong?
You guys are a joke. You got all wrapped in vlans and no wifi that you forgot that protecting your home was the point ... I'm not sure if that was actually the point or if you guys just wanted to waste a fuckton of money. Your security system was a waste, deal with it
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
Let's make a list of some of the things that people steal: Cash Phones Televisions Art Appliances Furniture You suggest the solution is to not own any of those things. No thanks, I actually like owning those things. But thanks for playing the blame the victim game. Can't wait for your solutions to the problems of rape and murder.
That is what authentication is for. If you hack a VPN server, you can come from Elbonia... just like you can grab the gold out of Fort Knox, all that stands in your way is the post security.
I see two ways of solving this:
1: HTTPS with persistant certificates AND client certs. This way, both sides authenticate with each other.
2: A VPN/VPLS, or other way to set up and join two physically separate network segments. This is by far a solved problem.
As for the OP, this might be too expensive for a security monitoring service to bother with, especially just for one user. To boot, even if the monitoring service did see action and call the popo, most crooks will be long gone.
Lets do this right:
1: Keep the CCTV cameras, but buy yourself a DVR... hell, Amazon has QNAP and Synology NAS boxes which can easily take footage from multiple cameras and stash it on a RAID protected drive for a few C-notes. Just buy some cheap external drives, shuck them, put the internal drives in the DVR, and go from there.
2: Defense in depth. It wasn't cheap, but I replaced all internal doors with steel core doors with mortise locks that had "secure classroom", or "classroom security intruder function" functionality. This means, they will always unlock from inside the room, but a key is needed from either side to lock it. When I'm not home, all rooms are deadbolted, and hall/kitchen doors are the same. My front door has multi-point locking, and I have roll-down shutters for the windows. This is because I am out of state often.
A burglar wanting in my place will have to smash through the front door, then smash through a hall door, bedroom door, bathroom, door, etc. All the while, the alarm is going off.
2: Now for the alarm system. The door locks slow down a thief, the alarm system makes it know there is a burglary in progress. I purchased a commercial system that uses a fog machine and strobes. If the thief can't see anything in the room, they are not going to steal anything, and they either leave empty handed, get lost and run into the popo, or think they are at a rave, and also run into to the local police. Fog also gets a lot more attention than just a noisy alarm.
3: Safes. Again, an easy place to put stuff. I personally use SafeLogic Xtreme dial locks on my safes, just because it gives me quick push-button access... but if the battery dies, I can slide the top bezel up, and work the safe as a dial, so no matter what, I can access my stuff. Even a crappy safe that has no protection other than a metal looking front is a lot better than nothing.
4: The dog. A burglary is one thing, but an intruder shooting a dog has just earned felony firearms charges, and DAs will go out of their way to prosecute those.
I don't expect everyone to do this, as I err on the side of security as I'm gone from my place often... but at least consider some defense in depth... even if it means using a Kensington lock slot or putting the desktop machine in a secure enclosure, to slow down a meth-head. It also is good to use high security locks, because if stuff does get stolen, insurance will reimburse locks that are broken or forced... but picked/bumped locks, your claim will be denied.
None of this will give you 100% security, but the trick is to use a combination of things. For example, high security locks, and deadbolts on the bedroom doors will force a burglar to spend a lot of time kicking and far less time looting.
More difficult, common burglars would not think of that.
Common burglars would not think of that.
A bit self-serving as the CTO of the company, but we provide this kind of service to commercial national account customers all of the time. Typically an IPSec VPN tunnel is established between the client site and I-View Now, and the DVR/NVR at the end of the tunnel is monitored for online status every 5 minutes (Which also helps keeps the tunnel alive). When an alarm is triggered, in under 5 seconds, the operator at the central station is viewing both a live feed from the camera associated with the zone that went into alarm, but also a 5-second pre-alarm clip of what actually tripped the alarm. This same video clip is delivered to the end users via a link sent in an SMS message so by the time they receive the call from the alarm company, they are seeing exactly what the operator is looking at as well. i-viewnow.com
Just use a Honeywell Ademco Total Connect 2.0 security panel and be done with it. Alot of central station monitoring companies support total connect 2.0, for verification the system sends 30 seconds of video, 15 sec prior and 15 sec after each alarm device activation. Plus you grt the same notification on your cell phone and have the option to send police.
It has nothing ot do with hardware overhead. It has everything to do with overall systemic overhead. Adding encryption is just another layer that can go wrong, needs updating, penetration testing, etc etc. Like i said i take exception to the idea that all this traffic needs to be encrypted by default, not the idea of encryption. Your argument is security through obscurity and nothing more.
Good-bye
Damn, it would be a lot cheaper and more secure to move out of that 'hood!
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It might seem like I'm being a pedant but that's not my goal. My goal is to learn something so, if I'm wrong, please do correct me (preferably with a whip, chains, and sexual gratification at the end).
Isn't there no such thing as a "VPN protocol?" Isn't VPN just what is created using any one of a few different protocols like PPTP, L2TP, and a couple others that I can't think of at the moment? Can't, with some work and however badly, VPN be done over quite a few protocols?
I am, by no means, an expert. I do have VPN enabled in a few different ways. I use a VPN to connect to my servers at home. I then use those servers, I offload, store, compute as needed, etc, and I connect to them through the VPN but using VNC at that end. Then, to add complexity to the mix, I also use VPN out of that box. I am currently using a VPN to connect to my servers using VNC which host a desktop instance. That desktop is connected to a VPN. I'm browsing Slashdot using that computer, through that VPN, using VNC, through a VPN which is being used on this connection.
Err... Why? Umm... I want to have a full-blown desktop and VNC was the easiest way for me to get this configured in a hurry and would be stable so that I could connect to it while using a hotel's wireless. It gets worse. I often have a VM running on that home server, which may or may not have VNC enabled, which may or may not be also connected to a VPN, and it's turtles all the way down. Seriously, I just wanted to be able to use the wifi securely while also having access to my home servers. So, they're configured to only allow certain IP addresses to access certain machines and they all use authentication schemes. I then tack on the new outbound VPN just 'cause it's already set up and I might as well.
It's actually worked out pretty well so far. I've been on the road since September.
Anyhow, to finally come back around to the rest of my question... Is there some sort of VPN protocol that I'm unaware of that I might have wanted to look into? I could have just used SSH, I guess, and tunneled through it but I wanted to access my desktop in a nice GUI fashion. I actually do almost everything through the home computers and the two laptops that I brought with me are basically not much more than dumb terminals. I'm now up to four laptops with me but two of them, ostensibly, belong to the missus though one is due to be retired but does hold some sentimental value for reasons too long to discuss here, well, at this point in time.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
Bored in your hotel, eh?
One, Houston police do not require video verification for alarm response. They do, however, require that your alarm permit is up to date, so make sure of that.
And two, you really do NOT want to pay for alarm-company-monitored camers. There's a reason that's a commercial system feature and not a residential one: It really slows down the alarm operator's handling of alarms, and raises costs for the company, which they pass along to the customer.
Even most small businesses don't pay for that feature. Only if they have exceptionally valuable inventory. It's mostly major corporations and government installations that use it. And a few high-cost small businesses like jewelry stores.
If you cousin's really concerned about security, tell him to make sure he has an old fashioned copper plain old landline phone to wire the alarm to, as well as a cellular communicator backup. Either one could go down but the odds of them both going down are very slim.
Cellular goes down a LOT MORE OFTEN than hardlines get cut.
'common burglars' don't do either. The break in, grab some stuff, and take off before anyone can respond to an alarm.
You do not need a VPN.
Exposing a port is quite a reasonable option. Simply require HTTPs with username/password authentication.
If your server and the monitoring provider both support it, configure the server to require an X.509 client certificate and supply one to the provider. It's unfortunately unlikely that they will support this, though.
If your video server is a horrible insecure piece of garbage that doesn't do HTTPs, or that has a hardcoded secret key that's in 100,000 other servers around the world, proxy the SSL support between it and the router with ngnix or Apache or similar, presenting a sensible SSL interface.
VPNs for each customer are an incredible pain. I'd refuse to consider it too. Most VPN endpoints are buggy horrible pieces of garbage. Clients are awful. Multiplexing them all is horrible, and means someone who successfully attacks the host handling all the VPNs probably gets much more access to your clients' networks than if you just used direct SSL connections.
No, using decent encryption is not security through obscurity.
Security through obscurity is when you assume nobody will crack your system because they don't know some magic number or method of yours, or some fatal flaw in your software.
It doesn't mean using encryption to make the pile of encrypted data even larger for those that want to decrypt it. That's perfectly sound thinking.
No company will help you to set up a solution specifically for you.
Do it the other way round: Specify that it must be encrypted, ask for offers, and let them suggest HW and SW. If you dont like it, look for another company.
It's always amusing when someone tries to supplant a definition with the slang of it. Sorry, but VPN is already well known in 'modern times' regardless of what the new generation of kids try to appropriate slang as while not understanding any of the underlying technology. The VPN slang is still the same exact thing, you must not understand that it just routes traffic out to the internet differently based on different use cases.
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Actually, there is a Karma level higher than yours.... it's called Bennett Hasselton.
Which has more power: the hammer, or the anvil?
I understand it quite well. The point was that people are more commonly using it to appear like their traffic has originated somewhere else which is why the parent poster didn't know what the GP was trying to say. The fault lays with the GP's lack of knowledge not mine.
"Use your head! How is it logical to expose unencrypted DVRs and IP cameras and the IoT to the world without some type of encryption?"
Why? What are you trying to secure? That is the important question. IT does not matter to me if someone can see my IP camera signal on most of my public facing cameras. There is jsut no need for that most of the time. Im not saying there should be no encryption, im saying that requiring it by default is retarded.
Good-bye
I was thinking about home security in a Global View, neighbors, energy-backup (thieves may down your power connection), internet supplemented connections (thieves may cut you wired internet connection) , store images (secure place with backup). And then look to secure the internet access to:
- view cameras
- control cameras
- control other house system
-> ssh and OpenVPN could help, you could have encryption and login control, tunneling, profile, have scripts, etc.
Its also good thing create an wifi mesh network (or routed wired) with neighbors using VLan where all security traffic will go.
just some toughs
Imma get that. ;-)
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
There are several national providers that are doing just this, viewing CCTV footage before a police dispatch. Your best bet would be to ask your alarm monitoring company if they have affiliated with any of them yet (or why not?). I would expect that within 10-20 years all alarm monitoring will be verified this way and may actually eliminate the need for an alarm system if you configure the video system to report motion. Time will tell how well the public accepts someone who has the ability to view their cameras on demand.