CCTV cameras & systems manufactured by some of the world’s largest Chinese manufacturers have built-in access vulnerabilities (Back Doors) that can be used to view & listen to any of the installed camera systems. Basically put, the newly disclosed backdoor vulnerability means that millions of cameras have been carrying the potential to be used as eavesdropping devices even with audio on the camera disabled.

These back doors also allow hackers from anywhere in the world to penetrate into your wider network & servers on a site, therefore urgent action is required to close these back doors. It’s estimated that the UK alone has 1 Million installed CCTV cameras that were manufactured by just one of the top Chinese companies!

A new UK government bill has followed the USA’s move to ban these Chinese CCTV manufacturing companies due to human rights abuses in China, however, the real reason is the vulnerable back door access left in these systems. Once a hacker is connected to the camera or NVR they can start to attack the entire network, which has happened to  

CCTV cameras made by Hikvision or Dahua, including 73% of councils across the UK, 57% of secondary schools in England, 6 out of 10 NHS Trusts, as well as UK universities and police forces.

As vulnerable CCTV and other IoT systems will take time to be replaced it leaves a greater risk of Cybersecurity, which ACS can advise accordingly.

ACS have a full list of banned CCTV systems including all known OEM white-label systems from both Hikvision and Dahua, so please call us: 01344 771569 to check your particular site’s cameras.