UK seeks to shutter Russian site streaming video from webcams by Barb Darrow.
From the post:
If you feel like someone’s watching you, you might be right.
A mega peeping Tom site out of Russia is collecting video and images from poorly secured webcams, closed-circuit TV cameras and even baby monitors around the world and is streaming the results. And now Christopher Graham, the U.K.’s information commissioner, wants to shut it down, according to this Guardian report.
According to the Guardian, Graham wants the Russian government to put the kibosh on the site and if that doesn’t happen will work with other regulators, including the U.S. Federal Trade Commission, to step in.
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Earlier this month a NetworkWorld blogger wrote about a site, presumably the same one mentioned by Graham, with a Russian IP address that accesses some 73,000 unsecured security cameras.
The site has a pretty impressive inventory of images it said were gleaned from Foscam, Linksys, Panasonic security cameras, other unnamed “IP cameras” and AvTech and Hikvision DVRs, according to that post. The site was purportedly set up to illustrate the importance of updating default security passwords.
Apologies but it looks like the site is offline at the moment. Perhaps overload from visitors given the publicity.
An important reminder that security begins at home and with the most basic steps, such as changing default passwords.
Only if you access the site and find out that you have been spied upon will you suffer any harm.
I am completely serious, only if you discover you have been spied upon can you suffer any harm.
Authority for that statement? FISA Judge To Yahoo: If US Citizens Don’t Know They’re Being Surveilled, There’s No Harm.