Thousands of private CCTV cameras have been hacked in Russia, said Igor Bederov, head of the Information and Analytical Research department at T.Hunter. According to him, many of these devices are located in hotels, massage rooms, salons where intimate haircuts and depilation are done.
This is evidenced by the fact that there are many Telegram channels, VK publics and forums on the Web, where they sell access to hacked cameras or videos from them.
One of these channels published an advertisement for the sale of access to video from more than 300 cameras from other people's bedrooms, washrooms, medical offices, salons, changing rooms. Price — 600 rubles ($8). Thousands of screenshots from such cameras have been published as advertisements on the channel: one shows a naked woman on a massage table, the other shows a man doing intimate depilation.
“Owners of hotels, beauty salons and other types of businesses put cameras in their premises for security purposes. Often such cameras are located directly in the rooms or offices where intimate services are carried out. At the same time, they are not always properly protected,” Igor Bederov explained the reason for such leaks.
According to open sources, vulnerable cameras are located all over the world. Accesses are often sold by subscription. But this is not the only way to monetize hacked devices. For example, recently the media wrote about the sale of an archive of video from surveillance cameras in Russian hotels and saunas for 15 TB.
Experts said that in some cases such frames are used to blackmail the heroes of the video or the owners of the cameras. Various services are often used to identify people from photos. If people are not identified, hackers can always find the organization where these cameras are installed by metadata.
Oleg Bakhtadze-Karnaukhov, an independent researcher on the darknet, claims that most often attackers hack cameras with network port 37777.
It is very easy to protect the device at the same time — just change the factory settings. However, according to expert, this basic rule is often ignored.
