Nest camera, has a different definition for Turn off Mode

Findings of a research show that the Nest camera is still operating even after it has been disabled through the mobile application.

People buy security cameras to have a higher level of control over their lives, but recently a research by a team at ABI Research found that users also must be worried about the security device itself.

This news is about a security camera of Nest Company that was acquired by Google in 2014. The device is the latest product of Nest that enables users to see live video of their homes or to be notified about unusual motion or sound. Findings of research show that the camera is still operating even after it has been disabled through the mobile application. The LED indicator approves that the device is off, but the current drain illustrates something else. It is expected that current drain drops significantly when a device is disabled, but it’s not true in the case of Nest camera and current drain decline just 30 mA when the device in turn off mode.

“When a device goes to power down mode, you expect the current drain to drop quite a bit,” said Jim Mielke, a senior analyst at ABI Research.

The following table published by ABI research and depict current drain for different modes of operation.

Mode	Resolution	Current
Video Record – no motion	1080p	371mA
Video Record – no motion	720p	330mA
Video Record – no motion detected	720p	418mA
Video Record – no motion	360p	322mA
OFF Mode		343mA

“When Nest Cam is turned off from the user interface (UI), it does not fully power down, as we expect the camera to be turned on again at any point in time,” said Nest Labs in a statement. “With that said, when Nest Cam is turned off, it completely stops transmitting video to the cloud, meaning it no longer observes its surroundings.”

It can be argued that turn off mode has a unique definition universally and Nest approach to define turn off mode is bizarre. Even though Nest used 128-bit secure sockets layer (SSL) encryption, perfect forward secrecy and a 2,048-bit RSA key unique to each camera, but users might face new security risks. Lastly, this camera uses electricity constantly which is not an efficient practice in 21th century.

About the Author Ali Taherian

Ali Taherian (@ali_taherian) is an enthusiastic information security Officer. He’s finished his education in information security and has recently been involved in banking software and payment security industry. Taherian is proud to be certified IBM Cloud Computing Solution Advisor and ECSA and enjoys sharing and tweeting about security advances and news.

Edited by Pierluigi Paganini

(Security Affairs – Nest camera, privacy)

Pierluigi Paganini

Pierluigi Paganini is member of the ENISA (European Union Agency for Network and Information Security) Threat Landscape Stakeholder Group and Cyber G7 Group, he is also a Security Evangelist, Security Analyst and Freelance Writer. Editor-in-Chief at "Cyber Defense Magazine", Pierluigi is a cyber security expert with over 20 years experience in the field, he is Certified Ethical Hacker at EC Council in London. The passion for writing and a strong belief that security is founded on sharing and awareness led Pierluigi to find the security blog "Security Affairs" recently named a Top National Security Resource for US. Pierluigi is a member of the "The Hacker News" team and he is a writer for some major publications in the field such as Cyber War Zone, ICTTF, Infosec Island, Infosec Institute, The Hacker News Magazine and for many other Security magazines. Author of the Books "The Deep Dark Web" and “Digital Virtual Currency and Bitcoin”.