A Detroit woman says her Ring camera, using wireless or WiFi, didn’t capture the moment her car was stolen from outside her house, and a local expert says it’s because cybercriminals are increasingly state-of-the-art. However, this situation has revived the debate on the question of choosing between WiFi or wired cameras.
Naturally, the arrival of wireless connectivity has been a great benefit as it keeps our physical space more orderly and avoids having to run lengths of cable between connected devices. But besides the convenience offered by wireless, when it comes to security, a debate has been raging for some time now, resulting in many disagreements: which is more reliable, Wi-Fi or network cables? The answer, however, is simple: the cable. Although Wi-Fi is a newer protocol, many factors come into play.
Ring is a Ukrainian home security startup that sells doorbells for capturing video and audio. Clips can be streamed to smartphones and other devices, while the doorbell even allows owners to chat remotely with those within range. Ring was acquired by Amazon in 2018.
Earlier this month, the victim said her car had been stolen from her driveway, and when she wanted to review footage from her Ring camera, she realized it was missing. Chris Burns, owner of Techie Gurus, said security cameras that use WiFi to record are more convenient than secure. Indeed, WiFi can easily be disrupted, or even hacked.
If you’re relying on wireless as a security feature, you’re wrong,” Burns said. Wireless signals are easy to jam or block. In December 2019, the US press reported that the login details of thousands of Ring camera owners were fraudulently published online. The information in question includes 3,672 email addresses, passwords, time zones, and even names given to Ring cameras by their owners like kitchen or front door.
The main Wi-Fi attacks are carried out by installing a hacker access point. Cybercriminals install a fake access point with a name similar to that of the company’s access point, near the company’s premises. When an employee unknowingly connects to this access point, believing it to be the real company access point, they report the authentication details of the original access point. The attacker can thus compromise the connection.
Cybercriminals can use this as a WiFi jamming device that can be the size of an Apple Watch. It will overwhelm a WiFi system, causing the WiFi camera to stop recording if you stand close enough. This accessory would only cost around 10 50 dollars. A jammer, on the other hand, would cost between $150 and $1,000.
Access to the Internet by Ethernet would be safer than by Wi-Fi
If one thinks in terms of communications security, the argument for wireless connections immediately loses its force when compared to Ethernet. Many types of attacks can be carried out remotely, such as deauthenticating a device or hacking the encryption key to penetrate the network.
In addition, over the past year we have seen the emergence of vulnerabilities such as KRACK, which affects WPA2 (one of the most robust and widespread protocols), and which has probably been the element trigger for the development of the new WPA3, although this has not yet been launched. Furthermore, a cybercriminal can also block wireless communications, with varying degrees of success, thanks to the notorious signal jammers.
- an attacker can disrupt the network connection by jamming the signal. There are functional tools for this purpose, also called “parasites”;
- if a router is installed using the default configuration, weak credentials, weak encryption algorithms, the attacker can easily break into the network;
- an attacker can enable an AD-HOC connection in a user’s system by using a Trojan horse, malware, or if an employee is already using an AD-HOC connection to share the Internet with peers.
- Finally, another very common type of attack is to use fake hotspots with the same SSID as a public Wi-Fi hotspot. The victim then connects to an open network created by the attacker, which snoops on the user’s traffic and steals their data.
Of course, these attacks are impossible to perform remotely via an Ethernet network, because an attacker would need to have physical access to do so. For these reasons, wired connections are more secure than wireless connections, or in other words, they offer a lower risk of incidents.
The attacker can compromise the connection operating in AD-HOC mode since this mode does not provide stronger encryption of the connection. The cybercriminal must find the wireless devices by methods like war-walking, warchalking, war-driving. There are tools like NetStumbler, Kismet to find wireless access points and capture traffic.
Once it has captured the traffic for that connection, it must analyze it using protocol analyzers to identify the authentication method used, the SSID, the devices connected, and how to compromise the connection. Depending on the protocol used for encryption, it has to use different tools/methods to penetrate the network and gain unauthorized network access.
A Ring spokesperson said: Like any WiFi-enabled device, WiFi signal interference can affect the performance of Ring devices. If customers are having connectivity issues, we encourage them to contact Ring Customer Service. Burns said that as technology becomes cheaper, jammers are likely to become more popular and that it’s important to keep people fully informed.
Sources : Vidos
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