On the Investigation of Vulnerabilities in Smart Connected Cameras

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On the Investigation of Vulnerabilities in Smart Connected Cameras Teknik och samhälle Datavetenskap Bachelor’s thesis 15 credits, ground level On the investigation of vulnerabilities in smart connected cameras Undersökning av sårbarheter i smarta anslutna kameror Désirée Jönsson Exam: Bachelor of Science in Engineering Supervisor: Joseph Bugeja Area: Computer Engineering Examiner: Andreas Jacobsson Program: Data & Mobil IT Date of final seminar: 2017-08-25 Abstract Humans have always developed products to simplify their everyday lives in the home en- vironment. A fast growing area is the Internet of Things where smart connect devices belong. The intention with smart cameras is surveillance where one can monitor their smart camera wireless from e.g a smartphone. Challenges with the intelligent connected cameras includes, how to get knowledge about espionage, attacks and damages. Many of these smart cameras have a reduced-size, low-power hardware with smaller resources avail- able, and therefore unable to implement optimal security mechanisms. Although these connected cameras can enrich the safety and create security with their surveillance, the smart camera also allows new ways for attackers to intrude due to the devices are con- nected to the Internet. The purpose of this thesis is to investigate what kind of open data is available on the Internet from, connected cameras. This is done by creating a program to extract publicly available smart camera information that is visible to anyone who has access to the Internet, and thus access to Shodan’s search engine. The open data shows vulnerabilities that can potentially be exploited to intrude on devices. The vulnerabilities found in the connected cameras due to availability of Shodan, were insecure configuration management and insuf- ficient authentication. By highlighting significant vulnerabilities in smart cameras found today, the thesis can contribute to how one with publicly available information can gain knowledge about vulnerabilities in smart devices. Given that vulnerabilities exist and the smart camera is connected to the Internet, it may be more than the owner of the smart camera that monitors the residence. Sammanfattning Människan har alltid utvecklat produkter för att förenkla sin vardag i hemmet. Ett område som växer snabbt är sakernas Internet där smarta ansluta enheter tillhör. Intentionen med smarta kameror är övervakning där man har möjlighet att bevaka sin intelligenta kam- era trådlöst från exempelvis en smartmobil. Utmaningar med de intelligenta anslutna kamerorna är att hur kan man få kunskap om spionage, attacker och skador. Många av dessa smarta kameror har mindre resurser tillgängliga, och har då inte möjlighet att imple- mentera optimala säkerhetsmekanismer. Även om dessa smarta enheter kan berika tillvaron och skapa trygghet med sin övervakning, så möjliggör också den smarta kameran nya sätt för angripare att göra intrång, då enheten är uppkopplade mot Internet. Syftet med den här uppsatsen är att undersöka vilken öppen data som finns tillgänglig på Internet om uppkopplade kameror. Detta genom att skapa ett program för att ex- trahera publik tillgänglig information om smarta kameror som är synliga för alla som har tillgång till Internet, och då också tillgång till Shodans sökmotor. Den öppna datan påvisar sårbarheter som kan utnyttjas för att göra intrång. Sårbarheterna som fanns hos de uppkopplade kamerorna på grund av tillgängligheten på Shodan var osäker konfigu- rationshantering och otillräcklig autentisering. Genom att belysa befintliga sårbarheter i smarta kameror som finns idag, kunna bidra till hur man med publik tillgänglig information kan få kunskap om sårbarheter hos smarta produkter. Med bakgrund till att sårbarheter finns och den smarta kameran är uppkopplad mot Internet, kan det vara så att det är fler än ägaren till den smarta kameran som övervakar hemmet. Acknowledgments I would like to express gratitude to Joseph Bugeja for the feedback, inputs and always inspiring discussions during my work of this thesis. Glossary Connected camera: Is a device that can send and receive images/videos via a computer network and the Internet for different purposes. Also named Smart camera, IP camera, Network camera etc. Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVE): Provides a reference-method for publicly known information-security, vulnerabilities and exposures. Insecure configuration management (ICM): Configuration management (CM) is a process for establishing and maintaining consistency of a product’s performance and secu- rity. Lack of CM can lead to insecure configuration management (ICM). Internet of Things (IoT): The Internet of Things is a term used for the development of a network consisting of devices which are embedded with electronics, software, sensors and network connectivity that enables these objects to collect and exchange data. The devices are connected to one another or to the Internet via protocols, and are in general referred to as smart (connected) devices. Open data: refers to digital information that is freely available without restrictions. Open Web Application Security Project (OWASP): is an organization with the ambition to support technologies in the field of web application security. Passive reconnaissance: Information gathering without actively engaging with a system to cause harm. Shodan: is a search engine for connected devices on the Internet. Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA): Software application pro- gram for process control. Vulnerability: A weakness or defect in a system which enables an attacker to bypass security measures, and might be exploited to cause loss or harm. Web crawlers: are software programs that uses another search engine’s data to pro- duce their own results from the Internet. Table of Contents 1 Introduction 1 1.1 Problem Domain . 1 1.2 Problem Discussion . 2 1.3 Research Questions . 2 1.4 Scope and Limitations . 2 1.5 Thesis Organization . 3 2 Background 4 2.1 Smart Cameras . 4 2.2 Smart Homes . 4 2.3 Shodan . 5 2.3.1 What is Shodan and how to use it . 5 2.3.2 Open data on Shodan . 6 2.4 Vulnerability . 7 2.4.1 Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVE) . 7 2.4.2 Open Web Application Security Project (OWASP) . 7 2.5 Reconnaissance . 8 3 Related Work 9 3.1 Uninvited Connections . 9 3.2 Internet of Things (IOT): Taxonomy of Security Attacks . 10 3.3 Exploiting known vulnerabilities of a smart thermostat . 10 3.4 Embedded systems security: Threats, vulnerabilities, and attack taxonomy . 11 4 Research Methodology 12 4.1 Methodology of choice . 13 4.2 Literature Study . 13 4.3 Experimental setup . 13 4.3.1 Create the program . 14 4.3.2 Verification of the program . 14 4.4 Procedure . 16 4.4.1 Extract the open data and filtration . 16 4.4.2 Data analysis . 16 5 Result and Analysis 17 5.1 The program . 17 5.1.1 Collected open data on smart cameras . 17 5.2 The vulnerabilities . 19 5.2.1 Specific vulnerabilities linked to CVE-2011-5261 . 19 5.2.2 Collected open data matching CVE-2011-5261 . 19 5.2.3 Insecure Configuration Management . 21 5.2.4 Insufficient authentication . 21 5.2.5 Vulnerability example tied to a specific smart camera . 23 5.3 Analysis of the result . 24 6 Discussion 25 6.1 Related work . 25 6.2 Limitations discussion . 25 6.3 Methodology Discussion . 25 6.4 Ethics . 25 7 Conclusion and Future work 26 7.1 Answering the research questions . 26 7.2 Future Work . 26 A Search criteria 29 B Filter and Keywords 30 1 Introduction Nowadays more individuals are relying on Internet technologies to meet their daily life activities. Most of the appliances such as washing machines, refrigerators are Internet- enabled, and also TVs are connected to the Internet [1]. The devices that are connected to one another or to the Internet via wireless protocols are in general referred to as smart (connected) devices. A part of a camera being smart is that they are autonomous and might act without users awareness or in some cases need of control. The connected devices are a part of Internet of Things (IoT). The IoT is about everyday devices that are using network connectivity that enable devices to collect and use data [1]. The IoT term was coined by Kevin Ashton 1998 [2]. Even earlier, the concept Ubiquitous computing was described by Mark Weiser and the concept describes the idea of integrating computing to appear anytime and everywhere [2]. A smart home is a residence that uses IoT technology and comprises a network of smart devices that meets different householders needs. The most prominent areas are: security, entertainment, energy and healthcare [5]. The global smart home market is growing at a fast pace. In 2015 the market was valued at $9.8 billion and is estimated to reach $43 billion in 2020 [5]. An example of a difference between a smart home in comparison to a traditional home are physical buttons. Physical buttons requires physical access in tradi- tional home. A person needs to physically turn the light on and off. In a smart home the physical access is not required. The buttons can be connected or disconnected with the help from wireless connectivity for e.g lighting control [1]. The number of connected devices introduced in the market has increased with connected devices, approaching about 15 billion today [3]. To take it in perspective, that is roughly two devices per human being. J. Wurm et al. [3] further discloses that the trend is going to continue and estimate about 26 billion network connected devices by the year 2020. This rapid increment of the smart home field leads to a race to put the next smart device on the market first. The consequence is that questions like security and vulnerability issues are not getting the focus and thought that are required [2] [3]. One uses the connected camera in the arguably most private environment there is, our home where there is personal data such as family photo albums, sensitive conversations, etc.
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