A large part of the video surveillance cameras of the Chinese company Hikvision, widely used in France, are highly vulnerable to computer attacks. This is the conclusion of a report published by the specialized cybersecurity company Cyfirma and disseminated by the Bleeping Computer site. Used in prisons, schools, but also by the police, Hikvision cameras are targeted by US authorities due to the risk of espionage by Chinese authorities.
France, the most affected country in the EU
According to the document posted online by Cyfirma, their teams have analyzed approximately 285,000 Hikvision cameras worldwide. Its objective: to determine if a critical security flaw that allowed a hacker to take control of the camera, detected in 2021 in 70 models of the brand, had been corrected thanks to the patch released by the company. Problem: in the sample studied, 80,000 cameras are still vulnerable due to lack of updates.
A laxity on the part of the administrators that weakens the security of some 12,500 cameras in China, 10,000 in the United States, or about 5,000 in the United Kingdom. With 2,377 cameras involved in the sample analysed, France is the European Union country with the most Hikvision surveillance cameras likely to be hacked. A situation that is all the more worrying since the exploitation of this flaw by hackers has already been documented.
In addition to real-time access to the images recorded by these cameras, hackers could use them to penetrate the computer network of sensitive infrastructure. At the end of August, hackers, whose identity is still unknown, attacked the South Francilien Hospital Center in Corbeil-Essonnes, preventing medical teams from accessing their IT tools for several days.
Source: BFM TV
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