Friday 21 November 2014

Security (Default config left behind) a guilty industry

Security (Default config left behind) a guilty industry

Recently about a month ago, a website has gone up which explores video cameras and display images captured from these video links on this Russian website.
Some of these cameras are at homes, companies, public gyms etc see the article at BBC News: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-30121159

While I understand this is a security risk and can be used with the wrong intentions and be exploited, I also see that this is a wider problem and needs to be addressed at the top.

Once again defaults being left behind! Is that a joke or what?!
As I said in one of my previous articles, it is partially our fault, but majority of the guilty and blame should be passed to manufacturers. They should know better!

In this new world we are living in, anything can be exploited and it will not take long, if you set up a website at home in your PC, it can be accessed in Brazil almost instantly. It is quick and this sort of information spreads even more quickly.

Some of these devices being sold as consumable, they can open up a lot of security issues in your network, home, anywhere.

While we wait for some regulations to be put in place (I think it will take a long time) security is a top down issue. Any product should leave the factory with a basic level of security!

Some easily, guessable user names being used on some of these devices are:

  • Admin
  • Administrator
  • root
  • guest
Information like this can be found anywhere on the Internet. So when you buy any device which requires

  1. Connection to the Internet
  2. Connection to a Network 
Look out for the basic security:
  • Change the default password
  • Change if you can the default username (too easy to guess)
  • Set account lockout 
  • Set idle timeout
  • Set HTTPS
  • Disable HTTP
  • Disable TELNET
  • DISABLE FTP
  • If you can link the account or service to Google Authenticator do it!
  • Enable the built in firewall if available
  • Set IP restrictions to certain IP addreeses

These are just some of the basic security, if followed a lot of problems will be avoided and will keep a lot of bad people out.

by Renato de OLiveira
 


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