Transcript
Micah Sargent (0:00)
Coming up on Tech News Weekly, Jennifer Pattison Tuohy of the Verge is here. We talk about how a bunch of cameras are exposed to the Internet and how wise is updating its security practices. Afterward, we talk about addictive tech use and its impact on mental health and round things out with a story about that Trump mobile phone. All of that coming up on Tech News Weekly. Podcasts you love from people you trust. This is Tweet. This is Tech News Weekly episode 392 with Jennifer Pattison Tuohy and me, Micah Sargent. Recorded Thursday, June 19, 2025 40,000 reasons to check your camera Security hello and welcome to Tech News Weekly, the show where every week we talk to and about the people making and breaking that tech news. I am one of your hosts this week. My name is Maika Sargent and today joining us for this episode of Tech News Weekly is Jennifer Patterson Tuohy of the Verge. Welcome back Jen.
Jennifer Pattison Tuohy (1:11)
Hello. Hello. Happy to be back. It feels like it's been a while was because you were on vacation.
Micah Sargent (1:16)
Exactly. Yes, that was what happened the last vacation. It was nice. It was good to take some time and get some R and R. But I am happy to be back and yeah, it does feel like it's been forever. So thank you for for here in my place at the time and now being here again. We've got a lot to get to this week. It's a story of the week packed show and I am really looking forward to talking to you about especially our first two topics because they fall into the the interests and in some cases passions that we both enjoy. So a sweeping investigation by cybersecurity firm Bit site, reported by 404 Media reveals that more than 40,000 Internet connected cameras, from office security systems to baby monitors and even hospital patient rooms are accessible to anyone with a browser and the right IP address. Many don't require hacking, they're simply left unsecured, often using default settings or login credentials. And the result? It's a staggering breach of privacy across homes and businesses and public spaces with footage surfacing on the dark web and being used in real world espionage and cyber attacks. So in looking at this report, this was kind of wild to see the Number Bitsite identified 40,000 plus live camera feeds open to the public. I mentioned hospitals, offices, data centers, jewelry stores, clinics, bird feeders. That one maybe makes a lot of sense, but it was just as often found in a large organization as it was found in a home. With of course the most egregious examples being the cameras. They found in hospitals and clinics that were actually monitoring patients. In this research, the report identified the most exposed devices in the US followed by Japan. And there were camera feeds found across all 50 US states. Even some protected cameras were also able to be accessed. And that meant that even though they had these protections in place that were supposed to keep the, the camera from being able to be accessed, it didn't matter because the researchers had ways of getting to those cameras. And I kind of want to talk about that because the, the research conducted was done so in a way to kind of mimic the ability of anyone with even the slightest bit of tech. Know how it wasn't any special hacking or trying to, you know, insert some package over packet, I mean over the Internet and, and hack into, or getting someone to plug in a flash drive. No, in many cases it just took an IP address and in some cases it doesn't even take that because there are websites and services out there that let you search for Internet accessible devices that people have in their homes or elsewhere. And so with all of that, they kind of looked into how to find things. Looking at cameras that operated over HTTP and in many cases those would have a built in web interface. They could then do something as simple as typing after the URL slash out period, jpeg. Because a lot of these cameras have similar firmware and so they work a lot alike and they output these little screenshots of what they're seeing. And if you get enough of those, you can really start to get a picture of what is going on. And then there were also the real time streaming protocol cameras that are more likely used in kind of professional systems and those also have very common paths like live SDP and slash MPEG4. And then the researchers were able to take that data and turn it into a series of images or video to be able to get that. So yeah, we'll talk a little bit more about what the researchers found in terms of how people were using these and everything else. But I wanted to get your early impression of this, Jen, because I know as someone who has been interested in the Smart home, I regularly hear from people who say, why would you put any of that stuff in your house? It's going to, you know, result in you getting hacked or someone's going to be watching you. What is your kind of response to that in general and then your reaction to hearing about all of these cameras?