We had something of a hit last autumn with our detailed guide on how to control other people’s CCTV cameras online (not, of course, that I’m suggesting you actually do that. Nuh.), here, and here. Recently, there has been a wave of people searching Google for the axis/cgi string that signals the presence of one of the most common brands of networked cam. Now, none of these people came by following links, so I was slightly foxed as to what had got so many people interested in peering into university libraries in Nebraska.
Now I know. Since a bunch of Austrian hackers worked out how to monitor the Austrian police’s shiny new wireless CCTV feeds and told the German hackercon, the Chaos Communications Congress, all about it, there’s been a significant traffic boost, apparently because they went into detail about some other systems including Axis too. They are apparently using altered satellite TV kit to pick up the signal around 2.3GHz and video editing gear to transfer it into a usable form, but sadly RF analogue-to-digital conversion of video streams rather passes the limits of my own geekness.
Moving on, they have now started a rather nice little website cataloguing cameras available on-line, here.
Edit: Muppet error removed. Quintessenz.at link inserted.