Submitted 9 months ago by throws_lemy@lemmy.nz to technology@lemmy.world
It’s been echod several times in this thread already but:
Wireless and security are oil and water. They do not mix. This goes byond wifi. If your security system has wireless sensors - you aren’t secure.
Wireless cameras are not security - they are a convenience. A convenience for checking on the kids in the back or seeing if that package got delivered.
If it’s not wired and powered it is at best a scarecrow and at worse an indicator that you have money and you feel secure.
Smart locks are fine. Your door isn’t particularly secure with a regular lock. If they want in enough to bring tech, they are coming in anyway.
I don’t disagree with that. If someone wants in they’re coming in. 100% agreed. The trick is making your self less of an easy target and cutting down on easy ins.
My statement was pretty generic as there is a lot of nuance to locks and security. My concern lies mostly with the fact that you rarely have a suitable blending of the two technologies. Either a lock company buying a kit or an electronics company buying bulk locks. Or a company that does neither and is looking for another thing to peddle on Amazon.
Some of these locks have very poorly positioned relays. You can unlock them with a magnet. Others can be actuated using a simple emf generator. Ones with passcodes can be read with consumer grade ir sensors or determined by wear and fingerprints.
Reducing attack vectors is always preferred. But it is absolutely up to the end user where their balance between convenience and security lies.
A good deadbolt and key while average is still superior as it is only 3ish attack vectors: pick or impression, destruction of door/lock, and the trusty rock:
Most doors have poorly placed windows with standard glass in or next to them.
They busted the door off the hinges when they broke into my house once. One of your doors is an open in door… those are kick in doors as the guy was telling me when he replaced mine.
Smart locks are worse. They have all the insecurity of a regular lock, plus more methods of insecurity, plus more failure modes that will shut you out of your house.
Most smartlocks have a bypass lock for power cuts etc. that is shockingly easy to pick.
there was show hosted by reformed burglars. One of the things they look for was expensive things in the front yards, being in planned community with few roads going into or out of. To get past home camera they wore hats and kept looking down, and just showed up in a lawn care or pool cleaning van.
And if you look at police report and court cases, do these camera make catching thieves more likely? No they don’t
I don’t love somewhere where people dress up as Scooby Doo villains to break into houses, I live in a place where people go house to house at 1 am and try door handles on cars and garages. A motion light and a camera does more to stop those people than anything else.
If someone wants to stage an organized heist, then yea, my camera isn’t doing shit, but neither are my door locks, or a bolted down safe. At that point it is just an insurance game.
Was it It Takes A Thief? I remember that show; it was actually pretty interesting
if they have a wifi jammer they have spray paint
Low tech solution sure - you need to walk up to the camera and would need the location of any cameras that would potentially catch you as you scooter around tagging the cameras. Advantage is you are 100 sure the cam can’t see you.
Deauth attacks work very well and don’t require you to nuke all of the wireless space.
There’s a variety of different attacks. Admittedly destroying the camera is more or less a sure thing hah.
That is a true statement. You can’t have both securtiy and wireless (convenience).
Every wirelessly transmitted signal, whether it is your network signal or bluetooth, can be intercepted from afar. It is even possible to encrypt the accoustic signel emittel from a needle printer and determine what has been printed because every letter/word emits a specific sound pattern. Sound travels wirelessly. This link from 2009 refers to that. Unfortenately it is written in German and I didn’t find anything in English, but you could translate it.
Sorry for being that guy but if possible you should always refrain from using Wifi for applications in production, safety and security. Too many known and unknown vectors to its reliability.
But yea, I get it. Most people don’t know the details and on the overall market most affordable devices and services for security systems are some semi-“smart” products which are simple to set up. The extra work and cost that come with professional equipment aren’t really appreciated, eapecially by those who don’t know any better.
This is exactly why the old fashioned Analog installations cost more to begin with: They’re very secure and more difficult to disable.
Of course, the number 1 method to avoid robbery is to simply make yourself an unappealing target: no FB/Instagram stories, door that looks more solid than it is, padlocks, signage warning of dogs/firearms (even if you don’t have either). Keep your equipment, cars, or boats inside or covered. Etc. Even just a floodlight that detects motion at night and makes a beep beep sound can scare off most kids and crackheads. If you live in an apartment, put some broken furniture on your patio and people will think you’re poor.
DO NOT put gun signs/stickers up. It’s an ongoing joke that a Glock sticker on a truck means “free gun inside”.
You’re right that you should try to make yourself a less appealing target for thrives, but some of your methods don’t really hold up to scrutiny. Beeping motion sensor lights and secure locks and doors are great ideas. They will absolutely deter casual thrives and addicts.
Advertising that you have guns is just advertising that you have something to steal that is valuable, easy to sell, and easy to carry.
Warning signs for dogs aren’t much better. If you don’t have a dog, that will usually become obvious to anyone close enough to read the sign. If you do have a dog, then the sign is just an invitation to have them murdered the next time you have to interact with police at home. It will also expose you to liability should any trespasser be injured by that dog. Yeah, even the person robbing you, but also children, other pets, and well meaning innocent people just doing their jobs (and not breaking the law by entering your property without permission) like meter readers, mailmen, land surveyors, emergency response, etc. When I see a dog warning sign, to me it just says that a dumb asshole abusing a dog lives here.
Broken furniture sounds clever, but that just says trashy, not poor. Actual poor people take better care of their shit. HOAs would also limit the places you could actually do this without fines in the suburbs. Broken outdoor furniture is as common as weeds in more rural areas.
WiFi Cams just mean that you can afford Internet. EVERYBODY has WiFi cameras. They are ridiculously cheap to buy and easy to install. Cameras (WiFi or not) aren’t a great deterent anyway.
That’s an interesting take, and I think I might agree with you.
Solid-looking boring lock, everything looking like it would last decades, looks like someone who sorted the security confidently.
Plastic looking wifi cameras everywhere have a “curtain twitchy granny” vibe.
I think the most primary thing of all is that, most people don’t have the means to run Ethernet cables to places that typical cameras are installed (doorbells and garage floodlights)
It’s a catch 22 though. Ok one hand, every single person in my neighborhood has multiple cameras on their property now and even when I lived in an apartment complex, everyone had a camera at their doorbell, but they all are usually ring or some other subscription based, phone home type.
Do WiFi cameras present a new attack vector, yea for sure. Is having a WiFi camera that could be disabled better than not having a camera at all (what was the reality 5 years ago), hard to say.
Every single person in your neighbourhood has multiple cameras?! Where do you live?
Networked cameras used for security should have local storage to buffer when the network isn’t available, regardless of if you’re using wired or wireless.
It drives me up a fucking wall that WiFi is the de-facto local device communication protocol. There are so many reasons not to use it.
Most home automation stuff seems to use Zigbee. Doesn’t have a lot of bandwidth though, so not useful for video.
And frankly, even if you have a video, the police around here won’t do shit with it unless someone has been killed.
That’s because you aren’t one of the owner class. The legally supported armed thugs don’t protect the citizenry. They protect the owners private and personal property. Your personal property isn’t worth protecting in their eyes.
I personally have many zigbee devices that I operate happily, but most entry devices by big names (e.g. Google, Amazon, Wyze) and smart-home appliances (think garage door openers, light/fan fixtures, laundry machines, ect.) end up being WiFi. Even if you’re a self-sufficient homelabber who buys all zigbee and self-hosted devices, it’s hard not to end up with a bunch of WiFi devices anyway.
And if you have a spouse who is less knowledgeable, it can be really hard to explain or justify the higher expense for something like a security camera, or dissuade them from buying a smart fan they really like because it uses an external WiFi connection for its smart features.
Zwave is great too, but still no video. Wired is the answer.
oh, sweet, sweet ethernet. how I love you.
As long as it’s not 100mbps ethernet on unshielded cable, that’s the absolute worst for RFI.
Sure, but still harder to do than wifi
Wifi jamming is an easy thing to do, as the whole 2.4GHz band works on the assumption that everyone is nice to each other. One non-cooperative device, and everything in that band goes down: Wifi, BT, Garage door openers, Car key fobs…
Vehicle fobs are usually not in the 2.4Ghz range, they’re usually in the 300-500mhz range.
But yes, there’s a lot of assumptions and usually it’s right, but it can be wrong also.
Also, fun fact, microwave ovens use very high power 2.45Ghz. so they can do this by simply rigging a microwave to turn on when the door is open, then pointing it at your house at a safe distance, like across the street.
Most companies that make outdoor stuff generally avoid 5Ghz because it’s a regulatory nightmare. Some countries allow it, others only allow certain frequencies, others only allow certain frequencies up to a certain power level, others basically don’t allow it at all. So all your fancy door bell/cameras/whatever that you connect outside your home are all going to be limited to 2.4 GHz with is basically universally available internationally (it’s an ISM band, while the wifi 5ghz is a UNII band)… So yeah, good luck everybody!
Also wired cameras and such exist, they’re a pain to install, but they work well, and the market for other outdoor network connected things is extremely limited… Things like doorbells.
I hate putting static objects on wifi, even something like my TV, I want it wired simply because it never moves and there’s no reason to use it wirelessly. I can run a wire to it once and even if I upgrade the TV, the wire still works. To explain this a little more, I’m an IT administrator and I have a specialty in wireless networking. As tersely as I can: more stuff on the WiFi makes it slow, so if something can be wired, it should be wired. Obviously there are things that are not well suited to it, like cellphones and laptops, but pretty much everything else should be wired. TVs, set top boxes, desktop computers… Basically anything that can be wired, that doesn’t regularly move around… Wired. This extends to cameras, doorbells, gdo’s…
This frees up wireless bandwidth for devices that are obligated to use it, like your phone and tablet.
I’ve seen a lot of network issues resolved by simply plugging in everything that’s practical to plug in, even if the device having the issue wasn’t one of the things plugged in.
Yeah, i always try to connect as much as I can to ethernet cables. The issue being that it’s sometimes a pain to install the cables, especially if you’re renting and can’t really pass wires through walls
I always find it a bit amusing when I see “shut down due to radar activity” in my 5GHz logs.
gdo’s? = God Damned Operators?
Internet-of-Thieves devices.
Use POE Ethernet. Problem solved.
Any recommendations for PoE cameras?
UniFi Protect is outstanding. You need to buy one of their NVRs or cloud gateways to use it, but it’s incredible & wouldn’t want another system for our house/family business
I use hikvision and the quality is great in low light. I haven’t connected them to the internet since I use Frigate and Home Assistant to monitor the feeds.
Quick question: What advantages do PoE cameras have over offline CCTV cameras?
Idk if it’s worth trusting articles from this site after the fake ddos toothbrush article.
Nonetheless, I can’t imagine crime not getting more sophisticated as time moves on.
POE cameras are the way.
I never understood wifi cameras, because yes of course it’s super easy to jam them. You need a power cable there anyway, is a data cable then really such a hassle?
Yes. With WiFi cameras you don’t need to run any cable, just plug in to the nearest power outlet. That’s very appealing to people.
I have a wifi camera. It saves locally to sd card. When it’s jammed, it won’t be accessible, but it’ll still record motion, so recording will be accessible as long as camera itself isn’t stolen.
I think a lot of them, like the Google doorbell camera use rechargeable batteries. So you don’t even need the power cable. Just take it off of the mount every few weeks to charge it back up.
Then throw it in the trash in 2-3 years once the battery sufficiently degrades and buy a whole new one of course.
Lol, there’s even 2 solutions that do both. Power over Ethernet and power line networking, so you only have to drag 1 wire across the house/attic
You can get POE(power over ethernet) cameras that dont require a separate power source. Closed circuit cameras are the only way to go.
My cameras are wireless. Some I recharge every 3-4 months, the others are powered by solar.
My video doorbell takes power from the existing doorbell wiring, but there’s no reasonable way to use that for data, so it’s WiFi
Other models are battery powered and supposedly last as long as half a year.
I’ve seen WiFi cameras you can hang anywhere: battery powered and kept charged with a small solar panel
I just poser all mine with POE
I've been saying this since the Nest and other similar bullshit came out. In the electronic security industry, we've been installing hardwired PoE cams for over a decade and a half. High resolution, high bandwidth, no batteries or separate power adapters, centrally managed LOCAL video storage. And not vulnerable to RF jamming/hacking. Stop buying the shitty Harry Homeowner equipment.
The picture shows a bullet cam, and PoE is readily available.
Wired network doorbell cameras are much harder to find, and they are double the cost
And that’s why hardlining is still by far the best option available.
Sure, this list isn’t 100% coverage, but it gets you nearly there with a minimum of effort.
You have some interesting ideas about what a minimum of effort looks like
minimum of effort
yeah, nah, they can just have my stuff.
Isn’t this easily detectable?
The camera sends a ping every 30sec to the host. Missing ping: sound silent alarm with possible tampering. Missing 4 pings, let all hell break loose alarm sound.
That is how my sensors work. They work on 433/868mhz, this is open band and easy to flood. If the hub misses a ping from a sensor, the tamper protection alarm goes of.
I feel like that would cause false positives
Then again, not that many people mess with their router
I mean if you really care about security you’re not using wifi… you’re going hard wired. Wifi can be messed up by your neighbors unintentionally and then there goes your tampering alarm. Tampering alarms are good when the system isn’t fragile.
No security installer is going to suggest wifi if someone’s genuinely concerned about security.
Running wires is expensive. That's why most people opt for wireless, and on top of that, the convenience systems like Ring offer with their app, no NVR/DVR, none of the typical security system hardware cluttering things up.
Running ethernet is pretty cheap
as tech becomes cheaper and easier to acquire
I didn’t know an improperly sealed microwave oven was such a difficult thing to get ones hands on.
I think they’re talking about it from the other end: more cheap tech like wifi security cameras means more people are vulnerable to “an improperly sealed microwave”
This is the reason that all of mine are hardwired (literally) through the roof. Obviously more timeconsuming to do but the signal is way more responsive than wifi (esp. when my wifi bandwidth drops due to giant periodic cloud backups or multi-gigabyte PS5 update file downloads) and I wanted to make sure that all of the video is shunted to cloud and local secure storage in whatever seconds it might take for an attacker to physically disable the camera. Dozen cables down and into my router and switch in the mancave but it is what it is.
Sounds like a good way to get the feds interested in your otherwise not very notable property crime.
You could just add a small nonvolatile buffer to each camera if it’s not wired, such that if it loses connection with your home assistant server it will start recording. With 720p video and a 64gb flash storage you could, depending on encoding, store well over a day of footage. (Napkin math so could be wrong)
The simple solution here is to record to flash when wifi dies. Yes wired stuff is nice but it half these are consumer installed.
Another reason to buy PoE cameras.
Thank fuck jammers like that are #HIGHLY# illegal here. Punishable up to 1M in fines.
A couple of well trained dogs are better than cameras if you’re serious about security.
This is why you shouldn’t use any “smart” devices as locks or to control anything important.
*Starts microwave open*
Someone said jamming?
Looks like my expensive ass setup was worth it after all now doesn’t it?
Most likely 2.5g WiFi deauth. 5g fixes it and the companies just put 2.5g chips that are affected by this. Not that hard to use 5g chips.
This goes without saying but obviously the most secure will be analog. Unfortunately that is neither accessible or worth the time and trouble for the average consumer.
Police need to have the tools to detect and locate the deployment of wireless jammers. People need more visibility over the electromagnetic spectrum. It’s a pretty big tell when they begin to use them.
Does anyone have another link? The site isn’t loading for me
darkevilmac@lemmy.zip 9 months ago
If you have to run power to it, you might as well run some data as well. Never really the best idea to have mission critical equipment at the mercy of a congested wifi network.
Bonehead@kbin.social 9 months ago
Save some trouble and go with POE. A little more expense to setup, but you only have to run one wire and everything is permanently hardwired.
BearOfaTime@lemm.ee 9 months ago
I’m hard pushing my family and friends to replace/install POE switches currently. Its a minor cost upgrade that will make my life so much easier
SayJess@lemmy.blahaj.zone 9 months ago
Heck yeah. In addition to POE, I’ve got a power line adapter setup to the NVR so that the cams are all hardwired to the modem/router combo. It’s fast enough for remote viewing in HD.
youngalfred@lemm.ee 9 months ago
A lot of the new systems can use battery powered cameras that are motion activated - they can last for a month+ on battery because they only turn fully on when they detect motion.
You’re right though - if it’s mission critical don’t rely on wireless.
jonne@infosec.pub 9 months ago
Some of them even have solar panels as well. It’s very useful if you want to DYI installation without having to run cables all over the place (data and/or power).
This Wi-Fi jamming stuff does seem like a huge issue. I was actually considering wireless down the line, but maybe a system with proper wired connections would be better.
Pistcow@lemm.ee 9 months ago
Have wireless setup, works really well. If they want it that bad they can have it while I’m gone or risk their life while I’m there.
suodrazah@lemmy.world 9 months ago
Trash passive IR motion detection.
akilou@sh.itjust.works 9 months ago
Electricity is already wired throughout, you just need to get to the closest plug. You have to run ethernet the whole length and it has length limitations. It’s not trivial.
Technofrood@feddit.uk 9 months ago
I mean ethernet has a range of 100 meters in one run (including with POE), which is probably going to be longer than the WiFi range assuming the WiFi access point is at the switch and it’s a relatively straight run. If you need more range a small 4 port POE switch is hardly likely to break the bank if you have a property big enough to need over 100 meters of ethernet in one run.
SnipingNinja@slrpnk.net 9 months ago
Isn’t there ethernet over power or something like that?
Brkdncr@lemmy.world 9 months ago
Solar/battery cameras.
frezik@midwest.social 9 months ago
Doorbell cameras are tricky there. They’re designed for the lowest common denominator and expect you to use the existing wiring for power, but nothing else. No PoE connections for that.
My other cameras are PoE, though. Madness not to.
ThePantser@lemmy.world 9 months ago
I use a reolink poe doorbell camera. It’s a bitch to replace your doorbell wire with Ethernet but it’s really worth it for the zero lag and camera still working during a power outage because my server is on a UPS. plus the wires can be used for a traditional doorbell if I sell the house, I just pick a pair and power them.
AA5B@lemmy.world 9 months ago
Ring has a PoE model. Expensive though
themeatbridge@lemmy.world 9 months ago
Just because they are popular and cheaper doesn’t mean it’s a good idea.
See also: Bathtub inserts, countertop veneers, cheap EIFS stucco, overlay roofing, etc.