Remember the movies where the bad guys replace the security guards video feed with a fake one showing an endless loop of nothing? Security researches have just figured out how to do this on a AXIS 2100 Surveillance Camera. This is a popular camera that can be remotly controlled - and viewed over the web.

"This hack (.pdf) works by combining a few vulnerabilities in how the camera's accompanying software accepts input -- a type of security hole known as cross site scripting, or XSS.

In this case, the attacker first sends some malformed information -- which is actually JavaScript -- to the camera's web server, which then writes that information to the log files. When the camera's administrator checks the logs, the JavaScript executes, creating a new user account and e-mailing the attacker that the new account has been created.

...From there the attacker can simply change the HTML on the camera viewing page to secretly point the playback screen to another video file -- one that can even be hosted on another web site."

The trick is to get the administrator to check the logs which could easily be done by sending a flood of traffic to the camera causing a temporary denial of service to the camera. You can view the entire hack here. Full article is below.

Sneaky White Hats Pull Surveillance Cam Switcheroo