Times Investigates Hikvision's Chinese Government Control

Brilliant

And the BBC has picked this up:

Does it concern you that over 1 million CCTV cameras are controlled by a company owned by the Chinese state? #r2vine pic.twitter.com/xm2KM0SGU7

— BBC Radio 2 (@BBCRadio2) September 16, 2016

Wait wait wait... does this mean IPVM is no longer the National Enquirer of our industry?

Any chance this will be part of the 2016 Presidential debate? If anyone is attending, ask them if they are aware

Would there be a benefit to switching to one of the rebranded versions of Hik, such as Interlogix for security purposes? Do they alter the firmware in such a way that if there was a backdoor or other security risk that it could be disrupted?

Now all we need to do is actually find that backdoor...

How many Hikvision employees are being forced to cancel their accounts today?

Is any of this doom and gloom factually substantiated. I don't mean whether or not Hikvision has any connection to the Chinese government. That apparently is fact but rather has any malicious code or back doors actually been found in any Hik products. In some installations caution would be advisable but I don't really think it would stop me from installing in a supermarket or a restaurant. In the worse case scenario been pushed here I'm not particularly worried that someone in China can see how much someone is selling bananas for or whether table 5 is ready for their main course. The same installations probably have bugger all security on their own PCs and phones anyway. Personally I'd be more concerned about who is going to be the next POTUS. That is is more of a security concern for the whole world.

The Australian has run an article, "China funded Hikvision’s CCTV with eyes across globe"

I am quoted in it (as I was interviewed for the original Times story). One error was made in quoting me as saying "Lots of consultants in the US won’t sell it". Obviously consultants specify, not sell. I have asked the Australian / Times to correct that.

Also Corriere Della Sera in Italy has picked up the story.

Just saw "Snowden" at the movies. As for all this paranoia about red's under the bed with Hikvision. I think that horse has already bolted with the NSA on its back. If and its only an if, the Chinese government are planning some covert hacking operation they may actually catch up to what the NSA has been doing for years.

Amazing!

Would like to see Washington Post or NY Times, WSJ get involved in the conversation or a major network news channel.

Are the same checks and balances - or lack of - applied to their network equipment Companies like Hauwei are global giants as well

For those of you (like Jon) who think their understanding of networking protocols and security can actually protect against interested governments from snooping on their stuff, please read the excerpt below.... it refers to the work of Tsutomo Shimomura (whom you might remember was the one who helped the feds track down Kevin Mitnick in 1995 after Mitnick hacked into his personal machine). His work has been funded by both the US Air Force and the NSA.

This archived post (excerpted below) was dated 1996 - 20 years ago.

Tsutomu's stealth version of the Berkeley packet filter did a lot more
than modload into the kernel.  He was paid by the Air Force to design one
that could patch itself into SunOS kernels invisibly, even into kernels
with no modload support at all.  It had special code that would search
through the kernel binary for references to the address of the Ethernet
chip, and patch itself in during the very low level interrupt handling.
It was highly optimized so it wouldn't show up by loading down the
machine, and it did things like decrement the interrupt counter so that
even the extra interrupts caused by running the Ethernet chip in 'receive
every packet on the wire' mode wouldn't be visible.  He talked about
enhancements that would automatically forward packets of interest back
out onto the Internet, so the whole shebang would hide in kernel memory,
never visible to users, never running any processes or altering any files.
Think of it as Digital Telephony wiretap technology for the Internet.

The idea was to design something that you could run on a machine without
the owner ever finding out about it.  To break into that person's network.
It's a tool customized for crackers.  It's one of the tools that Mitnick
was after when he broke into Tsutomu's machine.

Genuine Question

If the others - UNV & Dahua - are 'clean' ...how are they managing to match keep pace and match Hikvision's pricing levels?

Depending on the answer; 2nd question - are they sustainable long-term businesses if they don't have access to the same government funding?

NOTICE: This comment has been moved to its own discussion: How Are Dahua And UNV Managing To Match Keep Pace And Match Hikvision's Pricing Levels?

Hikvision UK GM has conducted an interview with a UK trade magazine denying control by the Chinese government.

We will do a full post in a few days but wanted to reference it here for those interested right away.