Wi-Fi jamming to knock out cameras suspected in nine Minnesota burglaries -- smart security systems vulnerable as tech becomes cheaper and easier to acquire

Lee Duna@lemmy.nz to Technology@lemmy.world – 871 points –
Wi-Fi jamming to knock out cameras suspected in nine Minnesota burglaries -- smart security systems vulnerable as tech becomes cheaper and easier to acquire
tomshardware.com
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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.

Here in belgium it is illegal to have hidden security cameras. You also have to put up a visible sign if you have them.

Location of the cameras here is easy lol

There is an advantage to advertising their existence: the sign itself may act as a deterrent and may motivate a thief to pick a softer target.

This of course is assuming you don't need a sign for each camera with an arrow pointing to it... at that point perhaps just a big dog would be a better choice hah.

Many cameras record to a SD card, deauth won't do much.

Sure there may be a hard copy but that will only have value after the crime is committed. Deauth / jamming will prevent the more meaningful things like proximity alerts and notifications from informing the user (or security system) which could lead to intervention.

I've always viewed camera storage as a fallback in the event something fails. Don't get me wrong I think redundancy is great and it's a fine feature. It has value - just less so in this particular case.

You could set up an alert for "hey, all my security cameras just misteriously disconnected"...

Not advocating for wireless security solutions, just saying it's not so hopeless.

That would definitely be a good approach if you were stuck with the wireless option. Im sure some software may address those disconnections in just the way you describe.

My responses have been looking at the technology broadly - in the way I might if someone asked me for my opinion prior to investing in gear. People frequently overestimate the effort required to achieve a bypass of a security device. So my goal was to provide some core knowledge.

I do like the suggestion though- it may help somone improve their own existing setup 👍