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South Korea removed 1,300 cameras from its military bases after discovering they're designed to feed back to a Chinese server (www.businessinsider.com)

submitted 2 months ago by MicroWave to c/world

56 comments fedilink hide all child comments

South Korea's military has been forced to remove over 1,300 surveillance cameras from its bases after learning that they could be used to transmit signals to China, South Korean news agency Yonhap reported.

The cameras, which were supplied by a South Korean company, "were found to be designed to be able to transmit recorded footage externally by connecting to a specific Chinese server," the outlet reported an unnamed military official as saying.

Korean intelligence agencies discovered the cameras' Chinese origins in July during an examination of military equipment, the outlet said.

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[–] [email protected] 99 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (7 children)

Don't all cheap IP cameras feed back to at least one server in China?

I bought two different no-name brands from Amazon several years back, and both models of them were trying to call home. I ran them on an isolated network, so they couldn't get anywhere, but they were persistent little buggers. Oh, and the root password to one of them was hardcoded to "1234567" lol

Tangent, but if anyone can recommend a good IP camera that just craps out an RTSP stream locally and doesn't phone home anywhere, DM me lol.

[–] AnIntenseMoist 114 points 2 months ago

Don't DM, reply so we may spread the word.

[–] [email protected] 32 points 2 months ago (4 children)

I'm really surprised that military in such a technologically advanced country just connected random IP cams to the internet

[–] [email protected] 19 points 2 months ago (1 children)

They were on sale!!!

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago

That's fine, I got them too but they're isolated

[–] UnderpantsWeevil 2 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

It's a big bureaucracy and procurement often just means going to the private sector and scooping up what's on sale.

Non-zero chance the Koreans are running around with explosive pagers in their pockets right now.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago

From the Yonhap article,

The company that supplied the cameras is suspected to have falsified the equipment's country of origin, and the military is considering taking legal action against it.

And also,

military and intelligence authorities found out the surveillance cameras supplied by a South Korean company were produced in China during military equipment examinations

The TLDR is that these cameras were supposed to be sourced domestically but the company behind it committed fraud to make a quick buck.

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[–] [email protected] 22 points 2 months ago (2 children)

Reolink, amcrest. Amcrest dont get anything starting with ASH in the model name.

If you want ONVIF, be sure to check the specs, many cheaper models drop support, but not all.

Some YI cameras have easily replaced firmware and can do rtsp too, but you have to do your homework on those models to be sure you're getting one that can be modded.

You'll still want to (IMO) toss any of them in a vlan without internet access, and rather than provide that vlan access to an NVR on another vlan, I'd lean toward your NVR having a second connection to that vlan. I'm a huge fan of segmentation though, so YMMV.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 months ago

I can vouch for reolink, they have fairly straight forward nvr with decent cameras for the money. Been using their poe nvr system for around 5 years now and have never had an issue with it.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

Yeah, that was my old setup: dedicated VLAN with the NVR and cameras in it. Had a firewall rule so I could access the NVR from regular LAN but nothing "got out" of the camera VLAN without being requested from the LAN first.

At first I had the NVR in the LAN with FW rules to reach the cameras in their VLAN, but my FW at the time struggled with all the simultaneous streams going through it so I moved the NVR in with the cams.

Maybe I'll just stick with my current setup of just getting old analog camera housings and sticking Raspberry Pi + camera module inside lol

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Dual nic NVR then? You could even just throw a simple switch with no uplink (but preferably managed so you can tag the traffic) and for extra safety just allow only the LAN traffic you want on the NIC/Port connected to your regular LAN from the NVR.

Nothing wrong with a DIY can though! As long as it works of course

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 months ago (1 children)

"NVR" in my case is just Zoneminder lol. I run it on a dedicated USFF PC and didn't want to deal with multi-homing it or a USB ethernet adapter. When I upgrade it, yeah, I'll probably get something with a dual NIC and go that route.

Right now, yeah, it's all DIY since I scrapped those cameras years ago (neither held up well to UV after 6-7 months outdoors), so I'm less concerned about it with all of them being RPis now. The only thing I lack is PoE since I didn't want to spring for the HATs.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 months ago

Yeah all of my servers are on usff PC's, so I get it.

If you do a hypervisor like proxmox, then throw your NVR in a VM, you can just create a couple of virtual NICs (though you'll be back at that FW issue I'm sure).

USB NICs are pretty well supported these days though, and cheap to boot. Just need to be certain you've got usb3 if you want to make use of that gig though!

I've got a few pi-a-likes that I'm doing similar camera fun with, though using some webcams in there and a 3d printed case. At least that way they match my diy temp sensors with esp32s!

[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

Same with russian 'grandma phones' with big buttons. Some researches found thst although they don't provide any functionality besides basic phone\sms stuff, they do try to call their motherbase, sending all credentials and geoloc. IIRC there was no argument about them sending the content of smses and voicecalls, but it's troubling as it is.

+ Russian as in sold there, they are chinese, sometimes with a local branding.

[–] dezmd 7 points 2 months ago

Ubiquiti G3 and G4 cams do rtsp direct streams without needing Unifi Protect services on a unifi gateway device. G5 requires unifi prot but can rtsp from the protec gateway.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Just get some raspberry pi camera.

What to do about IR vision though?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago (1 children)

I don't currently have them, but there is (or was?) a NoIR version of the Pi cameras that didn't have IR filters. That should let the IR LED illuminators work same as most other cameras advertised with night vision.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago

That would be pretty useful.
I'm still looking for how I might manage to use my old phone's camera anyway. Seems like a waste of good engineering to keep the pinout and protocol closed.

[–] Eldritch 2 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Not a plug and play solution. But if you aren't averse to tinkering. RPI zero with a CSI camera and v4lrtsp server. can get you done rather cheap. Depending on your needs.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago (1 children)

That's actually my current setup :)

Got some old analog cameras at an estate sale, gutted them, and put some Pi + camera modules inside. Couldn't get the original optics to work with it, and they lack PoE, but they're otherwise doing well (3 years and going). Just occasionally have to reboot them more than I'd like.

Haven't messed with v4lrtsp server, but zoneminder has been good to me. Will check that out.

[–] Eldritch 2 points 2 months ago

Yes you don't get things like Poe Etc. At least not on the zero models. There are hats for the full size pi. But you have full control and they are upgradable. I have a zero w in the official enclosure. Double-sided tape to a wall with a micro b cord plugged into power it. Can access the stream over Wi-Fi and get 30 frames per second 720P easy. Could easily do much better than that even. But the original Raspberry Pi camera module I think is the limitation. Because the cores on the Zero are barely being touched at all. In the low double digits if that.

It's so light on resources that if someone had an old USB hub. And some old web cameras laying around. You could run multiple cameras off of a single Raspberry Pi zero. I think you would hit Port bandwidth saturation before you would hit a CPU limit. Unless of course you're trying to reincode.

[–] Neon 50 points 2 months ago (4 children)

How the fuck did that happen?

Dear south korean government

please hire me instead. I promise I'm so paranoid, this will never happen.

[–] [email protected] 22 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Like every military operation, the job always goes to the lowest bidder, that is still overpriced, because it's just tax money. That's what always cracks me up about stuff that is marketed as military grade.

[–] finitebanjo 10 points 2 months ago (1 children)

It's still expensive because everything has to go through OPSEC.

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[–] febra 13 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

Capitalism. They just bought the cheapest reliable enough option they could find and didn't give two craps about infosec, because that's too expensive to actually properly do. Minimize the financial losses of an upfront purchase. (I worked more than enough jobs in hardware design to know what management cares about and what it doesn't)

Also, big yikes for the Israel flag in your username.

[–] finitebanjo 1 points 2 months ago

I think this is more of an OPSEC issue than an Infosec one, but both terms work.

[–] Agent641 10 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

Suppliers lie.

I know a guy who is the sole reason that software written by <adversary> isnt being currently used in <host countries most top secret defense environment>. His boss told him to lie if asked, and he refused to and informed <end user>.

[–] Cyberjin 1 points 2 months ago

Cheap devices

[–] fluxion 29 points 2 months ago (1 children)

China is the only country that gives you lifetime free cloud storage for your devices

[–] Agent641 2 points 2 months ago

Whether you like it or not

[–] [email protected] 26 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Stuff like this is why I have to tell our Chinese CFO why we don't want Huawei network devices. Yes Jeff, I know they are cheap as shit, you cheapskate, but you don't put the cheapest solution in place to run your critical systems on!

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[–] [email protected] 22 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Not if they were configured correctly. I.e. on their own, non-Internet connected VLANs.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 months ago (4 children)

If they found out it goes to a specific server, why not just block the server and maybe isolate the network from the internet? I guess its easier to replace them but what's to say the replacements can't have the same flaw if other precautions aren't in place, like how do you even get to installing cameras on military bases without thoroughly vetting the firmware on them fist?

[–] [email protected] 20 points 2 months ago (1 children)

This is just bad spy craft. You don't tell the person who bugged you that you found their bug. You mess with their head by setting up false flags.

Like have maps of China and what look like troop movements.

Or details about tank man.

[–] thesporkeffect 7 points 2 months ago

Maybe this is a double head fake and they have compromised the server in China?

[–] billiam0202 6 points 2 months ago

Why not have the cameras on a VLAN that has no Internet access?

[–] Jumi 2 points 2 months ago

Just use a system that connects to a server on base and nothing else

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago

I wonder if this was the case. From the bloomberg article,

"No data has actually been leaked," they added.

And from Yonhap,

found to be designed to be able to transmit recorded footage externally

So maybe they were designed that way, but it didn't work because the cam network was offline?

Keep in mind that this was on the border with North Korea, so, they'd (the South Korean military) have a very high level of paranoia on being hacked to begin with.