VietNamNet Bridge – Images and live streams from 985 security cameras in Vietnam have been displayed on the internet, causing concern in the security community.

The flaws of the security system have once again been exposed as hundreds of thousands of websites all over the world, including Vietnam, were being shown by the company Insecam on its website, CNET has reported.

Insecam said it wanted "to show the importance of security settings," and, to do so, it broadcast live feeds from thousands of security cameras.

Cameras open to public access, or cameras that use default passwords (admin/admin, admin/123456, root/admin, which come with the camera when it is purchased) are easy prey for hackers to penetrate and hijack the systems. Buyers are told to set a new password when they purchase the security camera.

Insecam broadcasted streams from cameras around the world, from offices to production workshops to schools.

On its website, the streams are categorized by country, with information about geographical co-ordinates, timelines, and log-in accounts (username and password).

These include websites in Vietnam, categorized according to provinces and cities. However, many cameras have now been neutralized or the owners have created a new password.

Although the company said it was broadcasting the streams to prove security weaknesses, it is nevertheless a privacy concern.

The US police in 2013 found a website specializing in trading video clips and information from people’s webcams. Kaspersky, a security firm, has warned users about these kind of risks many times.

A Vietnamese security expert said that up to 800,000 cameras worldwide spy on people.

The webcams and cameras use mostly IP cameras, installed at offices, production workshops, schools or at home, which allow clients to keep watch over places from a distance, through computers or smartphones.

Technology experts said images from cameras could be easily stolen because many people did not reset their default passwords after buying their cameras.

Hackers can illegally control cameras through a website or browser containing zero-day flaw, or they can install spyware on victims’ computers.

Vietnamese information technology experts said they had noticed significant changes to the list of cameras whose images had been broadcast on the internet. In Vietnam, at around 12 pm on November 11, experts said 733 websites were exposed to the public on the internet. However, the number of websites decreased to 656 by the evening on the same day.

The cameras reportedly were located in Hanoi, Can Tho and Bac Ninh.

Nguyen Hong Phuc, a renowned security expert in Vietnam, said images from the cameras can be taken in a simple way by using a tool, Network Scanning, to scan the IP addresses of the cameras.

Kham Pha