Australia Orders Checks On Chinese-Made Cameras In Defense Offices (reuters.com) 22
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: The Australian government will examine surveillance technology used in offices of the defense department, Defense Minister Richard Marles said on Thursday, amid reports that Chinese-made cameras installed there posed a security risk. "This is an issue and ... we're doing an assessment of all the technology for surveillance within the defense (department) and where those particular cameras are found, they are going to be removed," Marles told ABC Radio in an interview. Opposition lawmaker James Paterson said his own audit had revealed almost 1,000 units of equipment by Hangzhou Hikvision Digital Technology and Dahua Technology Co -- two partly state-owned Chinese firms -- were installed across more than 250 Australian government offices.
Paterson, the shadow minister for cyber security and countering foreign interference, urged the government to urgently come up with a plan to remove all such cameras. Marles said the issue was significant though adding: "I don't think we should overstate it." Hikvision said it was "categorically false" to represent the company as a threat to Australia's national security as it could not access the video data of end users, manage end-user databases or sell cloud storage in Australia. "Our cameras are compliant with all applicable Australian laws and regulations and are subject to strict security requirements," a spokesperson said in an emailed response.
Paterson, the shadow minister for cyber security and countering foreign interference, urged the government to urgently come up with a plan to remove all such cameras. Marles said the issue was significant though adding: "I don't think we should overstate it." Hikvision said it was "categorically false" to represent the company as a threat to Australia's national security as it could not access the video data of end users, manage end-user databases or sell cloud storage in Australia. "Our cameras are compliant with all applicable Australian laws and regulations and are subject to strict security requirements," a spokesperson said in an emailed response.
Learn To Make Your Stuff. (Score:4, Informative)
So many countries have exposed themselves by not manufacturing their own sensitive equipment. If you can't make it yourself then you are at the mercy of whomever you purchase your products. It would seem that they could monitor the equipment for extra data sent if that is what they are worried about. I would think someone in their IT department has the tools to detect bad data.
Not done already? (Score:2)
This seems suspicious to me - why would you ever put cameras into anywhere sensitive without verifying them first? Surely they'd have already made sure they only talk over wired ethernet and otherwise emit no radio signals, and their network chatter would presumably be firewalled off from the rest of the world.
I'm left wondering what other checks do they need to do? I suspect one of two possibilities:
1) They didn't do the checks in the first place, which suggests a problem bigger than cameras, or indeed the
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Just reading the first sentence: Money (time is money, too...)
It's probably safe to assume most of the G-7/G-8 countries already know this problem, though.
For others, it's overdue and probably too late, anyway. My friend in Ethiopia has been installing the cheapo re-branded security cameras in a few embassies there, and they don't GAF what's going in. But again, they probably know their facilities aren't secure anyways, so they use those SCIF rooms like we see in movies for anythigng important/sensitive..
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Oi (Score:2)
Re: Oi (Score:2)
cunts
I see that you're either Australian or you've met one.
Re: Oi (Score:1)
Re: Oi (Score:2)
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Have they heard of firewalls? (Score:4, Interesting)
Unless you know there is firmware in the cameras and itâ(TM)s doing something funky, this is a bit extreme.
Rather than ripping out the cameras, if they are hardwired, why not simply limit the IPs with which the devices can communicate?
Wifi? Another story. But, Iâ(TM)d think hardwired devices would be easy to lock downâ¦unless a Chinese maid or cleaning person could come in an swap out an SD card or something.
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Expanding on that, it might be wise to just move to "dumb" cameras and NVRs? That way, all the video data doesn't have to go through the Internet... only choice stuff would need to.
Firmware (Score:1)
Unless you know there is firmware in the cameras and itâ(TM)s doing something funky, ...
It is 2023, there is definitely firmware.
And moreover, tons of processing power and plenty of storage to do funky things is cheap. Go and search 'hikvision firmware cve' all day for just the known stuff https://www.hikvision.com/en/s... [hikvision.com]
Politians .... (Score:3)
These two are a lawyer and career politician, and a writer and career politician ...
What they know about security and especially electronic security is minimal
What's Ozzy for "duh doi"? (Score:2)
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No, it literally does not occur to them. All they see is a cheap camera when a domestically-produced equivalent with the same "features" costs an order of magnitude more. And by "feature" I mean being able to view the feed from their phone with two clicks and the one-time scan of a QR code printed on the camera. They don't even care once it's explained that the only way that weird app works is if the video feeds are redirected to a server in China first to then be delivered to your phone, because hey, ch
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Funny... (Score:2)