Is it possible to shoot with the forum webcam. Look into all eyes

Today, there are a huge number of different devices for recording video, ranging from smartphones to professional camcorders. But most Internet users still have a regular webcam that is connected directly to the computer. Therefore, in today's article we will tell you which programs for capturing video from a webcam are best used at home.

How to record video from webcam?

In order for you to have a better idea of ​​the possible ways to record videos using the standard webcam, let's take a closer look at some of the most popular ones.

First way- capturing video using the movie studio built into Windows (provided that you have the appropriate version of this OS installed) or the familiar Windows Movie Maker. It is very easy to record a video in it, just launch the program, select the “Video from webcam” item, connect the camera, set up an audio device (external or built-in microphone), click on the “Record” button and save it to your hard drive when finished. The program also provides the ability to edit video and publish the resulting file in social and media networks.

Second way- use the software that comes with the camera. Usually, all manufacturers complete their webcams with a simple video editor with the ability to capture images and video signals, which can be used to record video without any problems. Typically, such software is supplied separately on a disk or downloaded from the official website of the manufacturer. All that is required in this case from the user is to install the desired program, run it, and it will detect the camera itself and offer to record a video or take a photo.

Third way- install universal software for capturing video from any connected webcam. There are a lot of options, it will be enough to list the most popular and proven ones: VirtualDub, Screen Capture Studio, WebCamMax, Altarsoft Video Capture, BandiCam and others. All the presented programs allow you not only to record video from a laptop camera, but also make it possible to edit it, apply effects, text and animation. An additional useful feature is to capture the computer screen, for example, Bandicam or Screen Capture Studio. This is very convenient when you need to record your comments and demonstrate some work on the computer.

Quadruple way- the easiest and most affordable for everyone is the use of online services that allow you to record video from a camera online. There are quite a lot of sites with similar services, here are some examples of the most popular ones: YouTube.com, Skype, Recordr.tv, Webcamera.io, Webcamio.com, etc. The main advantage of such services is their availability and ease of use. You just go to the site and the shooting begins. At any time, you can stop it and save the video or publish the video online. A good example of this convenience and functionality is the popular YouTube, which allows you to broadcast online in real time. The main disadvantage of all of the above services is the need for a stable Internet connection, as well as possible problems with the quality of the saved video (some services only support recording in HD resolution and below).

In any case, there are plenty of ways to capture video from a regular laptop or desktop computer webcam today. And each of them has its pros and cons. You just have to choose the best one for you and use it as needed.

Associated with the privacy of users on the Internet. Aaron's, a laptop rental company, was accused of installing software on rental computers that allows them to spy on the device's webcam.

Aaron's immediately tried to refute the information. The press service said that the software is installed to search for devices that are not returned on time. And everything would be fine, but a married couple from Wyoming provided damning evidence.

The family rented a laptop, and a few days later, an Aaron’s collector arrived, who tried to collect the device and showed photos taken by the webcam as evidence of its use. Later it turned out that the collector arrived due to an accounting error and the family could use the laptop for a long time, but the incident had already happened and it could be used against the company.

Nikolay Schmidt, a user of The Question resource, told about another case of peeping with the help of a camera:

After my friend connected to the cameras of all subscribers of one of the providers, having easily gained access, I always close the camera. It's cool, by the way, to watch the expression on the face of a person at a computer.

P.S. He didn't do it with malicious intent. It's just that the CEO of the provider company is his friend, and my friend checked the vulnerabilities. Well, I allowed myself a five-minute prank.

Webcam and microphone

The most reliable way to stop surveillance through the camera is to seal its peephole with opaque electrical tape. Let them call you schizophrenic or crazy, but if you doubt your privacy, spit on it and find a piece of duct tape.

It's not so easy with a microphone. It can also be sealed, and this will to some extent reduce the chance that they will be able to hear you. But it might be better to use software.

For example, the Micro Snitch app for OS X is always active and checks in the background to see if any program has access to your camera or microphone.

For Windows, there is a Webcam Blocker Pro utility. It has the same functionality, but is much more expensive.

Unfortunately, these applications are not a 100% guarantee that you will not be eavesdropped. Therefore, if you cannot trust them, physical methods will be more effective.

Location

If you have not disabled location services, then your browser almost always knows where you are. You can disable services in the settings, or you can trick the browser by giving it the wrong coordinates.

In Chrome this can be done by pressing Ctrl+Shift+I and opening developer tools. Then you need to press Escape to go to the console, open the Emulation tab and change the latitude and longitude coordinates.

In Firefox, you can do the same, but with an extension. Geolocater will tell the browser the coordinates you specify.

Keyboard tracking

Programs that can monitor information entered from the keyboard are in the public domain. Many of them are presented as a means to store everything you have entered, but eloquent names like Spy Keylogger clearly hint at the main purpose of such utilities.

It is enough for an attacker to gain access to your computer for a couple of minutes to install the utility. To do this, you don’t even need to be a programmer - even a schoolboy can understand the program interface. In addition, there are more sophisticated ways to get to your keyboard even without physical contact with the computer.

There are several ways to deal with keyboard snooping:

1. Use the virtual on-screen keyboard. Since the malware is monitoring keystrokes directly, this might work.
2. Use abbreviations. For example, using standard OS X tools, you can assign abbreviations to phrases: if you enter the word "password", this abbreviation will be replaced by the password itself.

The methods are not one hundred percent, so in addition to them, you should check your computer with a couple of antiviruses.

On the one hand, this article looks like the ravings of a madman who considers himself an important person who is being watched by everyone. On the other hand, I do not exclude the fact that there are quite a lot of people who can really be followed. Moreover, surveillance can be organized both for profit and for fun.

And don't forget Hemingway. Nobody believed him when he said that he was being followed. It was only in the 1980s that the FBI declassified the writer's case and the fact of surveillance was confirmed.

Hi all! With you again Dmitry Kostin, the author of this resource. If you remember, in my last article I told,. Today I will tell you something similar, but this time how to shoot a video on a computer webcam. And again, I will give some great services as an example that will help us easily cope with this task. And the best part is that you don't have to install anything.

video recorder

This free online program just specializes in taking photos and videos using your webcam. And it does not matter at all whether it is built into your computer or laptop, or connected from outside.

There are not many settings in the service, but at least you can set the quality. And of course, the undoubted advantage is that you can record videos of unlimited length, which most of these online programs cannot boast of.

Of the minuses, I would single out a slight desynchronization of the video with the voice. That is, the voice is a fraction of a second behind the video. It would not seem scary, but still you need to get used to it.

cam recorder

I liked this service better. It is also absolutely free, but unlike the first option, there is no out of sync and the video is smoother.

Of the minuses, I would note the absence of settings as such, except for setting the number of frames per second (FPS). Also, the main disadvantage is that the video recording time is limited - only 2 minutes. So don't get too carried away.

clipchamp

Well, the last service that I would like to consider today is called clipchamp. Also a pretty good thing, but unlike previous online programs, here the recording is available only to authorized users. Therefore, you will definitely need to either register via email or log in with your Facebook account. I logged in with facebook. It took 5 seconds.

As in the second option, there is a limited recording time, but at least not 2 minutes, but as many as 5. Also, this is not a completely free service. You can save no more than 5 clips daily. Do you want to have no restrictions? Then sign up for a paid subscription for $7.5 per month. Then you will see the new effects available, and the recording time will increase from 5 to 30 minutes, and the number of saved clips will also increase. But I wouldn't bother with the paid version.

Well, that's basically all that I wanted to say about today. Please tell us, which of the above services did you like the most? I would love to hear your answer in the comments.

Well, that concludes my post today. Do not forget to subscribe to my blog updates, and also share the article materials with friends on social networks. Good luck to you. Bye Bye!

Sincerely, Dmitry Kostin.

As you know, even if you are paranoid, it does not mean that you are not being followed.

Today, when you absolutely right watch, this phrase is especially relevant - large companies have been monitoring your actions on the network for a long time, cyber scammers are getting accustomed to a bank account, and neural networks have learned to successfully recognize faces and find your VKontakte profile from a photo.

How to protect your webcam from hacking:

• Install a reliable antivirus, update it in a timely manner and do not disable it under any circumstances; use a firewall
• Update the operating system, browser, main applications and webcam drivers on your devices; google possible vulnerabilities of a particular model
• Do not connect to passwordless Wi-Fi networks; ignore messages and emails from unknown senders, especially if they contain suspicious links and attachments
• Download free programs only from the manufacturer's website
• Set a complex password on all devices with cameras and Internet access, including baby monitors and CCTV cameras
• Always change the factory security settings on all devices (computer, laptop, smartphone, tablet, webcam, router, etc.)
• Pay attention to the webcam activity indicators and check its settings if it turns on not only during video calls
• If you consider yourself an advanced user, disable the webcam in hardware.

No matter how ridiculous it may sound, the most effective way to protect a webcam is scotch tape or electrical tape :) However, remember that if an attacker has already gained access to a PC, he can still record sound from a laptop microphone or steal other important information. Therefore, antivirus, vigilance and critical thinking remain the main protection.

Imagine that the camera indicator light turns on for a second and then goes out. This can be a wake-up call that should not be ignored (unless you want your private life to suddenly become public). But even if the indicator is off, the webcam can still work secretly.

Finding out which programs are using the camera is pretty easy.

1. First of all, you will need special software that will show all the processes associated with a particular device. For this purpose, we suggest using Process Explorer. This handy program is available in online- and offline- modes.

2. Then you need to find out the name of the webcam in the system (in Russian versions of Windows, it sounds like "Physical Device Object Name"). It is not difficult to find this information: Start - Control Panel - Hardware and Sound - Device Manager.

3. Next, "Image Processing Devices" - "Properties" of the camera - the "Details" tab. In the drop-down list, select "Physical Device Object Name", which looks something like this: "\Device\0000009c". Right click on it and click "Copy".

4. Now we go to Process Explorer, open the search by the button with the binoculars icon (or the combination Ctrl + F), insert the "Physical Device Object Name" and start the search to find all the processes using your webcam.

If no suspicious activity is detected, there is nothing to worry about. Usually, you will only find Skype or other video calling apps on this list. However, do not be too lazy to check the launch path. Attackers often try to pass off a malicious program as a legitimate application, taking advantage of the inattention of ordinary users.

If you see suspicious non-system programs in the Process Explorer list that you definitely did not install, we recommend that you close this process and run a full antivirus scan.

P.S. The method described above can also be applied to microphones, which can also become a target for spyware.

Remote access to webcams and surveillance cameras is the most obvious hacking practice. It does not require special software, allowing you to get by with just a browser and simple manipulations. Thousands of digital eyes around the world will become available if you can find their IP addresses and vulnerabilities.

WARNING

The article is of a research nature. It is addressed to security specialists and those who are going to become them. When writing it, public databases were used. Neither the editors nor the author are responsible for the unethical use of any of the information mentioned here.

Eyes wide shut

Video surveillance is used primarily for security, so don't expect funny pictures from the first hacked camera. You may be lucky enough to quickly find an HD feed from a high-end brothel, but more often you will come across boring views of deserted warehouses and parking lots with VGA resolution. If there are people in the frame, then they are mostly waiters in the lobby and zhruns in the cafe. It is much more interesting to observe the operators themselves and the work of all sorts of robots.

IP cameras and webcams are often confused, although they are fundamentally different devices. A network camera, or IP camera, is a self-sufficient surveillance tool. It is controlled via a web interface and independently transmits a video stream over the network. In fact, it is a microcomputer with its own OS based on Linux. An Ethernet (RJ-45) or Wi-Fi network interface allows direct connection to the IP camera. Previously, branded client applications were used for this, but most modern cameras are controlled through a browser from any device - even from a computer, even from a smartphone. As a rule, IP cameras are always on and accessible remotely. This is what hackers use.

A webcam is a passive device that is controlled locally from a computer (via USB) or a laptop (if it is built-in) through an operating system driver. This driver can be of two different types: universal (pre-installed in the OS and suitable for many cameras from different manufacturers) and custom-written for a specific model. The hacker's task here is already different: not to connect to the webcam, but to intercept its video stream, which it broadcasts through the driver. The webcam does not have a separate IP address and a built-in web server. Therefore, hacking a webcam is always a consequence of hacking the computer to which it is connected. Let's put the theory aside for now and practice a little.

Hacking surveillance cameras

Hacking IP cameras does not at all mean that someone is in charge of the computer from which the owner watches their video stream. It's just that now he's not watching it alone. These are separate and rather easy goals, but there are enough pitfalls on the way to them.

WARNING

Peeping through cameras can result in administrative and criminal penalties. Usually they give a fine, but not everyone gets off lightly. Matthew Anderson served a year and a half for hacking webcams with a Trojan. Repeating his feat was awarded for four years.

First, remote access to the selected camera can only be supported through a specific browser. Some give fresh Chrome or Firefox, while others only work with old IE. Secondly, the video stream is broadcast on the Internet in different formats. Somewhere you will need to install the VLC plugin to view it, other cameras will require Flash Player, and still others will not show anything without an old version of Java or their own plugin.

Sometimes there are non-trivial solutions. For example, the Raspberry Pi is turned into a video surveillance server with nginx and broadcasts video via RTMP.

By design, the IP camera is protected from intrusion by two secrets: its IP address and account password. In practice, IP addresses are hardly a secret. They are easily detected at standard addresses, and cameras respond equally to requests from search robots. For example, in the following screenshot, you can see that the owner of the camera has disabled anonymous access to it and added a CAPTCHA entry to prevent automated attacks. However, using the direct link /index.htm, you can change them without authorization.

Vulnerable surveillance cameras can be found through Google or another search engine using advanced queries. For example:

inurl:"wvhttp-01" inurl:"viewerframe?mode=" inurl:"videostream.cgi" inurl:"webcapture" inurl:"snap.jpg" inurl:"snapshot.jpg" inurl:"video.mjpg"

Another great Internet of Things search engine is ZoomEye. Cameras are found in it by requests device:webcam or device:media device .

You can also search the old fashioned way, tritely scanning ranges of IP addresses in search of a characteristic response from the camera. You can get a list of IP addresses of a certain city on this web service. There's also a port scanner in case you still don't have your own.

We are primarily interested in ports 8000, 8080 and 8888, since they are often set by default. You can find out the default port number for a specific camera in its manual. The number is almost never changed. Naturally, other services can be found on any port, so the search results will have to be further filtered.

Finding out the model of a detected camera is easy: it is usually listed on the front page of the web interface and in its settings.

When I said at the beginning of the article about controlling cameras through a “proprietary client application”, I meant programs like iVMS 4xxx, which comes with Hikvision cameras. On the developer's website, you can read the Russian-language manual for the program and the cameras themselves. If you find such a camera, then with a high probability it will have a factory password, and the program will provide full access to it.

With passwords to surveillance cameras, things are generally extremely fun. On some cameras there is simply no password and there is no authorization at all. Others have a default password, which is easy to find in the camera manual. The ipvm.com website has published a list of the most common logins and passwords installed on different camera models.

It often happens that the manufacturer left a service entrance for service centers in the camera firmware. It remains open even after the camera owner has changed the default password. You can’t read it in the manual, but you can find it on thematic forums.

The big problem is that many cameras use the same GoAhead web server. It has several known vulnerabilities that camera manufacturers are in no hurry to patch.

GoAhead, in particular, is susceptible to a stack overflow that can be triggered by a simple HTTP GET request. The situation is further complicated by the fact that Chinese manufacturers modify GoAhead in their firmware, adding new holes.

In the code of other firmware, there are such blunders as curved conditional jumps. Such a camera opens access if you enter the wrong password or simply press the "Cancel" button several times. During our research, I came across more than a dozen of these cameras. So, if you're tired of sorting through default passwords, try clicking Cancel - there is a chance to suddenly gain access.

Medium and high-end cameras are equipped with swivel mounts. Hacking this, you can change the angle and fully examine everything around. It is especially entertaining to play dragging the camera when, besides you, someone else is trying to control it at the same time. In the general case, the attacker gets full control of the camera directly from his browser, simply by accessing the desired address.

When talking about thousands of vulnerable cameras, I want to take a closer look at at least one. I propose to start with the popular manufacturer Foscam. Remember what I said about the service entrances? So Foscam cameras and many others have them. In addition to the built-in admin account, the password for which is recommended to be set when you first turn on the camera, there is another account - operator. Its default password is empty, and rarely anyone guesses to change it.

In addition, Foscam cameras have very recognizable addresses due to template registration. In general, it looks like xxxxxx.myfoscam.org:88 , where the first two xx are Latin letters, and the next four are a serial number in decimal format.

If the camera is connected to the IP DVR, you can not only remotely monitor in real time, but also view the previous recordings.

How the motion detector works

Professional surveillance cameras are equipped with an additional sensor - a motion detector that works even in complete darkness thanks to an IR receiver. This is more interesting than the always-on IR illumination, as it does not unmask the camera and allows it to conduct covert surveillance. People always glow in the near infrared range (at least - living ones). As soon as the sensor detects movement, the controller starts recording. If the photocell indicates low light, the backlight is additionally switched on. And exactly at the time of recording, when it is too late to close from the lens.

Cheap cameras are simpler. They do not have a separate motion sensor, but instead use a frame comparison from the webcam itself. If the picture differs from the previous one, it means that something has changed in the frame and it is necessary to record it. If the movement is not fixed, then the series of frames is simply deleted. This saves space, traffic and time for subsequent rewinding of the video. Most motion detectors are configurable. You can set a trigger threshold to not record any movement in front of the camera, and set up additional alerts. For example, send SMS and the last photo from the camera directly to your smartphone.

The software motion detector is much inferior to the hardware one and often causes incidents. In the course of my research, I came across two cameras that continuously sent alerts and recorded gigabytes of “compromising evidence”. All alarms turned out to be false. The first camera was installed outside some warehouse. It was overgrown with cobwebs that trembled in the wind and drove the motion detector crazy. The second camera was located in the office opposite the blinking lights of the router. In both cases, the trigger threshold was too low.

Webcam Hacking

Webcams that work through a generic driver are often referred to as UVC compliant (from USB Video Class - UVC). Hacking a UVC camera is easier because it uses a standard and well-documented protocol. However, in any case, in order to gain access to the webcam, an attacker would first have to take control of the computer to which it is connected.

Technically, access to webcams on Windows computers of any version and bitness is carried out through the camera driver, DirectDraw filters and VFW codecs. However, a novice hacker does not need to go into all these details if he is not going to write an advanced backdoor. It is enough to take any "rat" (RAT - Remote Admin Tool) and slightly modify it. There are a lot of remote administration tools today. In addition to handpicked backdoors from VX Heaven, there are also quite legitimate utilities like Ammyy Admin, LiteManager, LuminosityLink, Team Viewer or Radmin. All that is optionally required to be changed in them is to configure automatic acceptance of remote connection requests and minimization of the main window. Then it's up to the methods of social engineering.

A code-modified rat is downloaded by the victim via a phishing link or crawls onto their computer by itself through the first hole it finds. For information on how to automate this process, see the article "". By the way, be careful: most of the links to “camera hacking programs” are phishing themselves and can lead you to download malware.

For an ordinary user, most of the time the webcam is inactive. Usually, an LED warns of its activation, but even with such an alert, covert surveillance can be performed. As it turned out, the webcam activity indication can be turned off even if the power of the LED and the CMOS matrix are physically interconnected. This has already been done with the iSight webcams built into the MacBook. Researchers Broker and Checkoway from Johns Hopkins University have written a utility that runs as a simple user and, exploiting a vulnerability in the Cypress controller, replaces its firmware. After iSeeYou is launched by the victim, the attacker is able to turn on the camera without lighting its activity indicator.

Vulnerabilities are regularly found in other microcontrollers. A Prevx specialist collected a whole collection of such exploits and showed examples of their use. Almost all of the vulnerabilities found were related to 0day, but among them were long-known vulnerabilities that manufacturers simply did not intend to fix.

There are more and more ways to deliver exploits, and it is becoming more and more difficult to catch them. Antiviruses often give in to modified PDF files, have pre-set limits on scanning large files, and cannot scan encrypted malware components. Moreover, polymorphism or constant recompilation of the payload has become the norm, so signature analysis has long faded into the background. Deploying a Trojan that allows remote access to a webcam has become extremely simple today. This is one of the popular pastimes among trolls and script kiddies.

Turning a webcam into a surveillance camera

Any webcam can be turned into a kind of IP camera if you install a video surveillance server on the device connected to it. On computers, many people use the old webcamXP, the slightly newer webcam 7 and similar programs for this purpose.

There is similar software for smartphones - for example, Salient Eye. This program can save videos to cloud hosting, freeing up the local memory of the smartphone. However, there are enough holes in such programs and the OS itself, so hacking webcams controlled by them often turns out to be no more difficult than IP cameras with leaky firmware.

Smartphone as a means of surveillance

Recently, old smartphones and tablets are often adapted for home video surveillance. Most often, Android Webcam Server is installed on them - a simple application that broadcasts a video stream from a built-in camera to the Internet. It accepts requests on port 8080 and opens the control panel to the aptly named /remote.html page. Once on it, you can change the camera settings and watch the image directly in the browser window (with or without sound).

Usually such smartphones show rather dull pictures. It is unlikely that you are interested in looking at a sleeping dog or at a car parked near the house. However, Android Webcam Server and similar applications can be used differently. In addition to the rear camera, smartphones also have a front camera. Why don't we turn it on? Then we will see the other side of the life of a smartphone owner.

Peep protection

The first thing that comes to most people's minds after demonstrating easy camera hacking is to tape them up. The owners of webcams with shutters believe that their problem of peeping does not concern them, and in vain. Eavesdropping is also possible, because, in addition to the lens, the cameras have a microphone.

Developers of antiviruses and other software protection suites use confusion in terminology to promote their products. They intimidate with cam hacking statistics (which are really impressive when IP cameras are included), while they offer a webcam access control solution, and a technically limited one at that.

The security of IP cameras can be improved by simple means: updating the firmware, changing the password, changing the port and disabling default accounts, and enabling IP address filtering. However, this is not enough. Many firmwares have unresolved bugs that allow access without any authorization - for example, at the standard address of a web page from LiveView or the settings panel. When you find another leaky firmware, you just want to update it remotely!

Webcam hacking is a completely different matter. This is always the tip of the iceberg. Usually, by the time the attacker gained access to it, he had already managed to frolic on local drives, steal the accounts of all accounts, or make the computer part of a botnet.

The same Kaspersky Internet Security prevents unauthorized access only to the webcam video stream. It won't stop a hacker from changing her settings or turning on her microphone. The list of models it protects is officially limited to Microsoft and Logitech webcams. Therefore, the "webcam protection" function should be taken only as an addition.

Peeping sites

A separate problem is attacks related to the implementation of camera access control in browsers. Many sites offer communication services using the camera, so requests for access to it and its built-in microphone pop up in the browser ten times a day. The peculiarity here is that the site can use a script that opens a pop-under (an additional window in the background). This child window is given the permissions of the parent window. When you close the main page, the microphone remains on in the background. Because of this, a scenario is possible in which the user thinks that he has finished the conversation, but in fact the interlocutor (or someone else) continues to hear him.