Have you ever thought of your digital SLR acting as a spy on you? Well, this wasn’t true before until two German found a weakness in a wifi-enabled Canon EOS-1D X. According to them, through this vulnerability the SLR can be used as a form of drone. The researchers Daniel Mende and Pascal Turbing showed this aspect of SLR in ShmcooCon hacker’s convention.
Help Net Security, first among the breaking of this presentation by Mende and Turbing, said the researchers were able to exploit 1D X thought four different ways. The common aspect of all these ways was the 1D X communication with a wireless network. (While the 1D X has no built-in WiFi, it’s compatible with Canon’s Wireless Transmitter WFT-E6A dongle, which attaches to a side port on the DSLR.)
Through this vulnerability, a hacker could wirelessly steal photos; the WiFi infiltration in the SLR can also allow hackers to upload their own images into the camera or, at the most provide control to anyone over the SLR wirelessly.
This type of WiFi hacking isn’t limited to a SLR such 1D X. But, it could be applied over any WiFi-enabled digital camera or smart phone.
Mende and Turbing also presented ways to help prevent such attacks occurring in the future to any smartphone or digital camera user. To sum up the researchers tricks: be sure your WiFi camera is always supported to some form of network security encryption, such as the common WEP protocol.
