Subscriber Discussion

Can Confetti Be Used By Perps To Overload Low End Cameras?

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David McNeill
Aug 01, 2017

A customer mentioned to me today use of confetti or glitter to overload the motion detection capabilities of low end cameras or dvr systems, causing them to lock up.

Used by perps as a form of suppression or disabling a camera system.

A few searches didn't yield anything.

Has anyone observed this in the wild?

Perhaps IPVM could add this to camera tests, handful of glitter past the lens?

Surely more than x% motion just becomes continuous record.

Does the high intensity motion overload just the ccd or front end?

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Brian Karas
Aug 01, 2017
IPVM

Cameras are subjected to very high motion scenes in that sense all the time from rain, snow, etc. Also, dodgy mounts, where the camera moves around in high winds, or vibrations from the building/pole/whatever it is mounted to.

None of these scenarios reliably cause the lock-ups you are describing, and they occur for far longer continuous periods than a handful of glitter thrown in front of a lens would.

 

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JH
John Honovich
Aug 01, 2017
IPVM

David, we have done tests with 'DJ' strobe lights, e.g., turn off the lights, turn on the DJ strobe. While it produces a surreal scene and causes bandwidth to spike (because of all the motion), we have never seen it shut down a system. Theoretically, if enough camera's bandwidth spikes and the recorder cannot handle that much bandwidth, the video could lose frames.

I have never heard of anyone doing this and don't think this is a very effective means of disabling a system.

However, the general point / topic of how an adversary could disable, break or steal a recorder is interesting and we will queue that up for a future survey question.

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Sean Nelson
Aug 01, 2017
Nelly's Security

I havent heard of it either. That would be a pretty crappy system if it did get overloaded and shut down IMO. A summer swarm of bugs is probably the equivalent to a good handful of confetti and cameras are subjected to that all the time.

Some systems allow you to have a higher bit rate on the motion events than they do on static scenes. I could see where some cheaper systems cant handle the sudden ups and downs of bit rate changes but I havent seen it first hand. Perhaps in these instances the cameras bit rates are exceeding the DVR's capabilities. With this being said, I cant see a perp having this indepth knowledge of the system to capitalize on this.

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Mark McRae
Aug 01, 2017
Inaxsys Security Systems

This sounds like the type a nonsense an unethical sales person would tell an end-user to convince the person not to use what he would describe as "low-end" equipment.

You can very easily disprove this claim with a simple demonstation.

(6)
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David McNeill
Aug 01, 2017

Hrmm, so all valid & well informed points people, good input.

So I wonder if this is just speculative thinking by the criminal community? Like someone has floated the idea, or is even suggesting it to their thug mates.

Oddly my source for this information is a well informed business owner who has paid lots of money to install better cameras on several of his businesses. I've upgraded a lot of his Foscam cheapos to 4Mp Hikvisions, and the staff all enjoy the better resolution and reliability.

He does employ a lot of recent South African migrants, perhaps it is something being suggested there, with their much more active crime situation.  I guess anyone trying and failing at it will find their pictures on a police report.

Maybe it is indeed just ineffective sales patter as Mark suggests, although I don't see the owner changing a very successful install.

Thanks for your help, I'll close this out as a distraction.

 

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JH
John Honovich
Aug 01, 2017
IPVM

He does employ a lot of recent South African migrants, perhaps it is something being suggested there, with their much more active crime situation.

David, thanks for the feedback. If he is really worried about internal issues, then he should consider either recording off-site or at least lock the recorder away, etc. A much more effective technique of an insider would be to steal or damage the DVR rather than try to obscure individual cameras.

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David McNeill
Aug 02, 2017

Indeed.

Fortunately the dvr is a virtual machine on linux with nx witness, so it's "somewhere" in the server farm cluster.

Looking at the tech racks you wouldn't know specifically where the recorder is.

Damaging the server space is striking at the heart of a company and will likely bring a very rapid and robust response.

Continuous archiving off-site is more challenging, as the volume is too great to use the normal internet pipe.  Will have to sort out some sort of archive x% of content.  Currently we only backup to a NAS elsewhere on site.

UI
Undisclosed Integrator #1
Aug 01, 2017

Why not just burn out the the imager of the camera with a "Star Gazer" type laser pointer? Much more effective and pretty hard to catch if done from 300+ Feet out. 

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UI
Undisclosed Integrator #2
Aug 01, 2017

Green laser can burn any video sensor?

UI
Undisclosed Integrator #1
Aug 02, 2017

Not sure if color matters, but the intensity of the light would.

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David McNeill
Aug 02, 2017

Annoying, more destructive behaviour.

High power lasers (> 1mw) have now been restricted in New Zealand, mostly due to aviation issues.  

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