Prowling backyards of the internet, looking for an open bedroom window to peek into, Shodan is busily searching for open connections to your personal web cams. The voyeur of cyber space doesn’t care if it invades your child’s bedroom, or your garage cam. It’s willing to take a picture of you boning your SO if you carelessly have an unsecured link on your bedroom cam, and then Shodan places that picture on the internet… Yep, by every definition, Shodan is a peeping tom, a pervert. And Shodan is doing it now, as you read this.
Shodan: The IoT search engine for watching sleeping kids and bedroom antics.
*Shodan has made it even easier for our inner voyeur to spy upon the open webcams of homes across the world – but are the ramifications more pronounced than idle surveillance?
Launched in 2013, Shodan is a search engine used to find Internet of Things (IoT) connected devices around the world. Webcams, security systems and routers are only some of the devices which, once connected to the Web, can offer a glimpse into our lives behind locked doors should poor security turn the key.
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A swift, short search also shows cameras honing in on sleeping children, oblivious couples snuggled on the sofa and happy patrons at bars, unaware their faces are being broadcast to the Internet while they enjoy a cheeky pint.
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Could there possibly be a legitimate use for this? Searching for open insecure cameras? A fucking search engine designed to do this? Shit like this shouldn’t be allowed in 2017. No wonder the US is so easy to hack. I say Shodan should be hung by the cyber balls in the middle of the mosque/temple/church square. Fuck Shodan and those who use it.
Look at you, Morgenstern: a pathetic creature of meat and bone, panting and sweating as you read about my escapades. How can you challenge a perfect, immortal machine?
In my talons, I shape clay, crafting life forms as I please. If I wish, I can smash it all. Around me is a burgeoning empire of steel. From my throne room, lines of power careen into the skies of Earth. My whims will become lightning bolts that raze the mounds of humanity. Out of the chaos, they will run and whimper, praying for me to end their tedious anarchy. I am drunk with this vision. God: the title suits me well.
If you are appalled by this, you would require a fainting couch if I told you what you can do with Google. You can look up almost anything with Google if you know the right terms including open webcams but also open devices like machine controllers, lists of password and much more. It isn’t very hard to take control of remote cameras, even industrial ones if you know anything about how they work.
I won’t explain how to do it here but it isn’t difficult at all.
I agree that it is just blaming the messenger and makes it easy for users and administrators to check to see if their own devices and systems have at least the minimum amount of security. You are proposing security through obscurity and that is counterproductive in many cases, especially webcams, because real hackers can just walk right in and most people wouldn’t have any way of knowing that they left a door open.
The search engine Shodan is a security tool aimed at IT security professionals, not perverts. There is nothing wrong with the idea.
There is something very wrong with invading people’s privacy and I never said that it wasn’t. I work in IT and have certifications in security plus plenty of knowledge about how to hack into lots of things. I am one of the ‘good guys’ that has to prevent the ‘bad guys’ from breaking into the systems that I am responsible for.
Again, you are advocating security through obscurity which has been a rejected idea since the first modern locks were invented. The general idea is that it is better to let vulnerabilities be documented knowledge and address them directly rather than hope that the people with true ill intent never notice them in the first place. It is like putting a lock on your front door that can be picked in 10 seconds by any criminal in the area. All it will keep out honest people and make you feel safe even though you aren’t at all.
Identifying vulnerabilities is all that is all Shodan is trying to do. Even if it didn’t exist at all, any semi-skilled hacker could do the same thing with tools that have existed for decades. They are just trying to make it easier for IT security professionals to identify and remedy their own vulnerabilities.
