Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

posted by chromas on Friday August 17 2018, @03:14PM   Printer-friendly
from the ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ dept.

Submitted via IRC for Fnord666

Josh Mitchell's Defcon presentation analyzes the security of five popular brands of police bodycams (Vievu, Patrol Eyes, Fire Cam, Digital Ally, and CeeSc) and reveals that they are universally terrible, though the Digital Ally models are the least bad of the batch, as Wired's Lily Hay Newman reports.

All the devices use predictable network addresses that can be used to remotely sense and identify the cameras when they switch on. Attackers could pinpoint intense police activity by watching for groups of cameras that all switch on at the same place and time.

None of the devices use code-signing, making them typical of garbagey Internet of Shit devices. That means that attackers can slip arbitrary code into them. And none of them cryptographically sign the video they take, which would be a relatively strong way of detecting tampering by police officers, their departments, or criminals.

Source: Boing Boing


Original Submission

This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
(1)
  • (Score: 3, Touché) by DannyB on Friday August 17 2018, @03:38PM (2 children)

    by DannyB (5839) Subscriber Badge on Friday August 17 2018, @03:38PM (#722834) Journal

    And none of them cryptographically sign the video they take, which would be a relatively strong way of detecting tampering by police officers, their departments, or criminals.

    Why would we want to detect tampering by police officers or police departments? They are the good guys. Their word is gold. Their word is trusted in (some) courts even more than video evidence.

    Tampering by criminals, yes -- because they're criminals for not being part of the police force.

    Now if only electronic voting machines could be as secure as these police body cameras.

    --
    The anti vax hysteria didn't stop, it just died down.
    • (Score: 1) by messymerry on Friday August 17 2018, @04:48PM (1 child)

      by messymerry (6369) on Friday August 17 2018, @04:48PM (#722854)

      I didn't see a /sarc. addition. Are you serious? Police probable cause affidavits are lessons in creative writing. The truth takes a distant second to "" WINNING""

      Militarizing the police is a sure path to rebellion. The only hope for humanity is an "uncorruptible policeman" a la the 1950 movie: "The Day The Earth Stood Still". The bulletheads in D.C. are feverishly working to weaponize AI and all the while, we should be doing the exact opposite.

      The police are completely tribal. They are not your friends. Stop supporting them until they remember their place...

      --
      Only fools equate a PhD with a Swiss Army Knife...
      • (Score: 2) by DannyB on Friday August 17 2018, @05:39PM

        by DannyB (5839) Subscriber Badge on Friday August 17 2018, @05:39PM (#722863) Journal

        The sarc tag was this: Now if only electronic voting machines could be as secure as these police body cameras.

        --
        The anti vax hysteria didn't stop, it just died down.
  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 17 2018, @03:57PM (3 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 17 2018, @03:57PM (#722839)

    Well, this must be a quality article.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 17 2018, @04:00PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 17 2018, @04:00PM (#722841)

      Better than anything you've ever written.

    • (Score: 3, Funny) by DannyB on Friday August 17 2018, @05:41PM

      by DannyB (5839) Subscriber Badge on Friday August 17 2018, @05:41PM (#722864) Journal

      IMO Boing Boing is better than Bing.

      --
      The anti vax hysteria didn't stop, it just died down.
    • (Score: 2) by c0lo on Friday August 17 2018, @06:46PM

      by c0lo (156) on Friday August 17 2018, @06:46PM (#722893) Journal

      Read it on Wired [wired.com] then.

      --
      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0
  • (Score: 2) by takyon on Friday August 17 2018, @03:58PM

    by takyon (881) <takyonNO@SPAMsoylentnews.org> on Friday August 17 2018, @03:58PM (#722840) Journal

    Think of the local access.

    New holster forces all nearby body cams to start recording when gun is pulled [arstechnica.com]

    Oops, my automatic body cam malfunctioned and didn't record the shooting.

    --
    [SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 17 2018, @04:21PM (9 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 17 2018, @04:21PM (#722846)

    Can someone clue me in--what does this mean/represent?

        from the ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ dept.

    • (Score: 2) by takyon on Friday August 17 2018, @04:26PM

      by takyon (881) <takyonNO@SPAMsoylentnews.org> on Friday August 17 2018, @04:26PM (#722850) Journal

      Shrug or "shruggie"

      https://emojipedia.org/shrug/ [emojipedia.org]

      https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2014/05/the-best-way-to-type-__/371351/ [theatlantic.com]

      As Kyle Chayka writes in a new history of the symbol at The Awl, the meaning of the “the shruggie” is always two, if not three- or four-, fold. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ represents nihilism, “bemused resignation,” and “a Zen-like tool to accept the chaos of universe.”

      https://www.theawl.com/2014/05/the-life-and-times-of-¯_ツ_¯/ [theawl.com]

      --
      [SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
    • (Score: 3, Insightful) by DannyB on Friday August 17 2018, @06:03PM (7 children)

      by DannyB (5839) Subscriber Badge on Friday August 17 2018, @06:03PM (#722873) Journal

      You are no doubt familiar with the Smiley characters :-)
      This is formed by three characters: colon-dash-rightParen

      The hands up shrug: ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
      is formed with a unicode character: ツ
      Unicode has characters from other languages. That way you could have text, or a domain name in Russian, Chinese, Japanese, Hebrew, Arabic, Korean, etc.
      Unicode also has characters for mathematics, musical notation, and many other things.
      You could say Foobar is © 2018, and Frobulator™ will soon have a ® registered tirademark. Or it is 127° outside today.

      More recently, Emoji characters were added to unicode. This allows emojis to actually be written into text. For example, a cat face emoji could appear directly in text, for example:

      Trump says

      Grab 'em by the p😾😾😾y.

      The primary motivation which drove the Unicode group's decision to add emojis to Unicode was so that Windows 2019 Server could use emoji host names. That way a server name could be 2 cat faces and one dog face, and a birthday cake symbol. 😹😹🐶🎂 Only a 4 character host name. And other Windows PCs could see it on the network, with that 4 emoji character name.

      I'm still waiting for Unicode to add characters for Vorlon, Shadow, Centuari, Narn, Minbari, Klingon, Romulan, Vulcan, Kardassian, Dwarvish, Elvish, and a few more. That will make it possible to have better domain names in your URL. Instead of birthdaycake.com, you could have 🎂.com, which is much easier to type on a keyboard with five thousand keys.

      Hope that helps.

      --
      The anti vax hysteria didn't stop, it just died down.
      • (Score: 2) by DannyB on Friday August 17 2018, @06:07PM

        by DannyB (5839) Subscriber Badge on Friday August 17 2018, @06:07PM (#722876) Journal

        also, some unicode characters happen to resemble upside down english characters.

        ˙sɹǝʇɔɐɹɐɥɔ ɥsılƃuǝ uʍop ǝpısdn ǝlqɯǝsǝɹ oʇ uǝddɐɥ sɹǝʇɔɐɹɐɥɔ ǝpoɔıun ǝɯos 'oslɐ

        http://www.revfad.com/flip.html [revfad.com]

        An example of how to use upside down text . . .

        Q. A jackass of all tirades, and the master of none?
        A. dɯnɹʇ

        --
        The anti vax hysteria didn't stop, it just died down.
      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 17 2018, @07:01PM (3 children)

        by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 17 2018, @07:01PM (#722898)

        > You are no doubt familiar with the Smiley characters :-)

        :-)

        Thanks to all for the detailed attempts at explanation, but you've missed something that seems crucial(?) The original smiley and variations require a 90 deg left/CCW tilt of the head to make the "image" upright. While these may hurt*, I figured them out long ago, back in Usenet days. (*I often have a painful neck ache--likely from too many motorcycle accidents in my youth).

        My confusion about this "hands up shrug" should now be clear -- it is viewed in original orientation. In fact, head-tilting turns it into, perhaps, some kind of modern dance pose? Or an Egyptian hieroglyph?

        Don't get me started on emojis. Short version, text communication is no substitute for f-2-f meeting, or a phone call--and emojis are a very poor substitute for real-time-communication. While my engineering business relies heavily on email, I make it a point to phone customers on a regular basis to make sure we stay on the same page.

        • (Score: 2) by c0lo on Friday August 17 2018, @07:31PM (2 children)

          by c0lo (156) on Friday August 17 2018, @07:31PM (#722910) Journal

          Short version, text communication is no substitute for f-2-f meeting

          The irony. Or, to put it your way: "Can someone clue me in--what does f-2-f mean/represent?"

          (OGHIHA - Oh, God, how I hate acronyms)

          --
          https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0
          • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 17 2018, @08:10PM (1 child)

            by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 17 2018, @08:10PM (#722921)

            In case you were serious, I apologize: f-2-f = face to face.

            • (Score: 3, Funny) by DannyB on Friday August 17 2018, @09:02PM

              by DannyB (5839) Subscriber Badge on Friday August 17 2018, @09:02PM (#722940) Journal

              Thanks for clarification. People might think it has something to do with two female connectors needing some sort of gender changing dongle.

              --
              The anti vax hysteria didn't stop, it just died down.
      • (Score: 3, Funny) by c0lo on Friday August 17 2018, @07:24PM (1 child)

        by c0lo (156) on Friday August 17 2018, @07:24PM (#722908) Journal

        that way a server name could be 2 cat faces and one dog face, and a birthday cake symbol. 😹😹🐶🎂

        👍

        I'm still waiting for Unicode to add characters for Vorlon, Shadow, Centuari, Narn, Minbari, Klingon, Romulan, Vulcan, Kardassian Kardashian, Dwarvish, Elvish, and a few more.

        FTFY 😀

        --
        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0
  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 18 2018, @08:15PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 18 2018, @08:15PM (#723172)

    don't tell them what's wrong with their shit. we need Bacon Sniffer: the app.

(1)