Surfacing around the world today was the news that Russian hackers have hijacked footage from baby monitors, webcams and CCTV systems in Britain and other countries and streamed the footage live on a Russian website.
In amongst the 600 feeds hijacked from the UK is footage from gyms, shops, driveways and perhaps most shockingly, bedrooms, including a child’s bedroom in Birmingham. The news comes as a huge wake-up call to many with an estimated 350,000 such cameras sold last year in the UK. Cameras from brands including Panasonic, Liksys and Foscam have all been affected.
In their defence, the people behind the website, Insecam, have strenuously denied that any hacking has been involved and that the devices targeted were merely operating on their default security settings. It has been suggested that they wanted to highlight the security breaches that are possible if people don’t change default passwords on their security systems.
How We Can Help…
As experts in home and commercial security solutions, including providing the highest quality CCTV systems, we wanted to offer you our top tips to keep your surveillance footage and any other confidential information safe.
1. ALWAYS change your password from its default setting. If you only take away one message from this blog – let it be this.
2. Don’t use obvious passwords such as children’s or pet’s names as hackers can glean this information from sources such as social media.
3. Try and use passwords with special characters and a mix of letters and numbers to make them more difficult to guess.
4. Use different passwords for all accounts – although this may seem like hard work, if one password is compromised, you can rest assured that none of your other accounts will be affected.
If you’re still worried that your CCTV system may have been compromised, we’re more than happy to help. Our CCTV monitoring systems are installed to British standards and our comprehensive system offers covert cameras and secure recordings leaving you worry-free. For more information call 0161 883 2502 or visit our site.
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