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Tens of thousands of DVRs exposed on Internet with Hardcoded Passwords

According to a report published by Risk Based Security more than tens of thousands of DVRs are exposed on the Internet with a hardcoded password.

According to a report published by Risk Based Security (RBS), the firmware of DVRs manufactured by China-based Zhuhai RaySharp contains hardcoded credentials that could be used by a remote hacker to gain control of the devices.

“DVRs based on the Zhuhai RaySharp DVR firmware provide a webbased management interface for users to manage the device, view feeds from connected surveillance cameras, and use the PTZ (PanTiltZoom) controls. It was found that the interface contains hardcoded credentials that allow anyone to easily access the device. ” states the report.

The digital video recorders include a web interface that allows users to manage the devices, access the recorded video, and control surveillance cameras.

The access to the devices is very simple, they are all configured with the same username “root” and the password “519070.”

There are more than tens of thousands of digital video recorders (DVRs) exposed on the Internet, security experts at Risk Based Security used Shodan revealed that there are between 36,000 and 46,000 DVRs accessible from the web, most of them located in the US.

The security issue is much more extended, according to the experts many other vendors worldwide (i.e. Defender, Lorex, KGuard Security, König, Swann, and COP USA) commercialize digital video recorders using firmware affected by this vulnerability (CVE-2015-8286).

Experts at Risk Based Security reported the vulnerability to the US-CERT in September 2015 that notified all affected vendors in October. Some vendors are working to their own patches but many of them still haven’t solved the problem and RaySharp has yet to release a fix.

The problem affecting DVRs is quite common for IoT devices, poorly configured devices expose them to cyber attacks.

Pierluigi Paganini

(Security Affairs – DVRs, IoT)

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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”.