I'm a little frustrated with articles like this that scattershot their critique by conflating genuine failures with problems that even FAANGs struggle with.
In particular, I don't love it when an article attacks a best practice as a cheap gotcha:
"and this time it was super easy! After some basic reversing of the Tapo Android app, I found out that TP-Link have their entire firmware repository in an open S3 bucket. No authentication required. So, you can list and download every version of every firmware they’ve ever released for any device they ever produced"
That is a good thing - don't encourage security through obscurity! The impact of an article like this is as likely to get management to prescribe a ham-handed mandate to lock down firmware as it is to get them to properly upgrade their security practices.
It's probably fair to assume that most of their other camera models are affected by the same or similar issues. It looks like they pump out quite a few models that I image have similar firmware.
This page[1] lists the C200 as last having a firmware update in October, but also lists the latest version as 1.4.4 while the article lists 1.4.2. It seems like they have pushed other updated in this time, but not these security fixes.
I looked at some older Zyxel products and came to the same conclusion a while back. There's a whole industry of labeling generic hardware as being part of someone's else ecosystem
This is so bad that it must be intentional, right? Even though these are dirt cheap, they couldn't come up with $100,000 to check for run-of-the-mill vulnerabilities? There must be many millions sold. Quite handy for some intel agencies.
I assume any Wi-Fi camera under $150 has basically the same problems. I guess the only way to run a security camera where you don't have Ethernet is to use a non-proprietary Wi-Fi <-> 1000BASE-T adapter. Probably only something homebuilt based on a single board computer and running basically stock Linux/BSD meets that requirement.
As soon as i read the author used grok as an ai assistant, i was somehow less interested to keep on reading. Not because of the usage of ai, but the chosen provider. (I don’t know whether grok is just the best choice for this kind of work.)
Is it wrong to judge people for their choice of ai providers?
It's worth interacting with all models. In my experience, for programming questions grok delivered better answers than ChatGPT (and Claude) often enough that at some point I wasn't sure which model I should be asking first.
I judge people based on what IDE they use. Harshly.
Judging people by the LLM company they keep (for example, using an LLM touted as "anti woke" made by a company headed by a man that some describe as a failed-upwards narcissist nazi anti-trans asshat -- not saying I'm accusing elon of being that, just saying that he's not 100% well-liked) seems pretty milquetoast compared to hating on people who use vscode.
Very interesting, I had a go with Ghidra and AWS Amazon Q, used it to reverse the video feed on a toy drone. I did not think to look for GhidraMCP, would of made it a lot quicker.
So which camera brand has adequately designed software? It’s hard to know as a consumer what to trust or not trust, because how do you evaluate the quality of their work when the device SEEMS to work as expected? Is Ring the only choice?
In particular, I don't love it when an article attacks a best practice as a cheap gotcha:
"and this time it was super easy! After some basic reversing of the Tapo Android app, I found out that TP-Link have their entire firmware repository in an open S3 bucket. No authentication required. So, you can list and download every version of every firmware they’ve ever released for any device they ever produced"
That is a good thing - don't encourage security through obscurity! The impact of an article like this is as likely to get management to prescribe a ham-handed mandate to lock down firmware as it is to get them to properly upgrade their security practices.
This page[1] lists the C200 as last having a firmware update in October, but also lists the latest version as 1.4.4 while the article lists 1.4.2. It seems like they have pushed other updated in this time, but not these security fixes.
[1]https://community.tp-link.com/us/smart-home/kb/detail/412852
https://www.hydrogen18.com/blog/hacking-zyxel-ip-cameras-pt-...
https://www.hydrogen18.com/blog/hacking-zyxel-ip-cameras-pt-...
Definitely a problem for regular users.
(Phones is one notable exception. I need contactless payments to work.)
I assume any Wi-Fi camera under $150 has basically the same problems. I guess the only way to run a security camera where you don't have Ethernet is to use a non-proprietary Wi-Fi <-> 1000BASE-T adapter. Probably only something homebuilt based on a single board computer and running basically stock Linux/BSD meets that requirement.
For the tech savvy, there is thingino as a firmware alternative - works local only, no cloud, and supports mqtt etc.
ftfy
Is it wrong to judge people for their choice of ai providers?
Judging people by the LLM company they keep (for example, using an LLM touted as "anti woke" made by a company headed by a man that some describe as a failed-upwards narcissist nazi anti-trans asshat -- not saying I'm accusing elon of being that, just saying that he's not 100% well-liked) seems pretty milquetoast compared to hating on people who use vscode.
No guarantee that it'll be perfect either, obviously, but it's open source and actively maintained. Highly recommended.