The Co-op is to ban the use of Chinese CCTV in its supermarkets after warnings over ethical concerns and security risks. The company – the fifth-biggest food retailer in the UK, with 2,500 stores nationwide – is to phase out all CCTV cameras from the Chinese firm Hikvision.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but can’t most Hikvision cameras work completely offline? Block them from reaching out to the internet, and just connect locally. You could still do remote access through other means, so functionality shouldn’t take a huge hit.
It still allows them access to the rest of your LAN, potentially. Even if you’ve got them on their own subnet, vlan escape is a thing and mistakes happen.
I’m not talking VLANs, although that is an option. I’m talking about completely blocking WAN access. You could also detect the IPs it’s connecting to, and block them across all your devices.
It’s really hard to block WAN access from only a couple devices without putting them on their own physical network that nobody, not even authorized personnel, can access. A determined enough attacker can and will find a way to make a connection through all the hops and firewalls you add, and if there’s even a single circuitous route from the cameras to the internet, they have a chance of finding it.
That’s also ignoring the potential for there to be a wireless transmitter like Lora built in.
Let’s be honest here, no system is perfect. Whether it’s devices from China, USA, or here in the UK. Even if it’s properly secure today, it might not be tomorrow. You just need to mitigate risk. There is always something. As for easy/hard to do something… that’s relatively simple in even prosumer software (nevermind Enterprise). 5 minutes in Unifi, or Pf/OpenSense, is all it takes.
“Really hard” is my polite way of saying “100% impossible.”
You’re correct. I have had Hikvision cameras for quite some time. I didn’t trust them from the start so they can’t go online. I can’t watch remotely but I don’t care about that. Not everyone will be in this position though
Yeah, but you can’t use that to push sinophobia.
I wonder if others will follow suit - Hikvision (not the best of monikers - I always think the installer will be called Cletus) are in a fair few government sites.
It seems that has been going on for some time, UK government bans new Chinese security cameras
Right, thanks for that. My offices are full of them. Wonder if there’s a plan to replace them? I shall ask our security team.
