The Los Angeles Police Department has warned residents to be wary of thieves using technology to break into homes undetected. High-tech burglars have apparently knocked out their victims’ wireless cameras and alarms in the Los Angeles Wilshire-area neighborhoods before getting away with swag bags full of valuables. An LAPD social media post highlights the Wi-Fi jammer-supported burglaries and provides a helpful checklist of precautions residents can take.
Criminals can easily find the hardware for Wi-Fi jamming online. It can also be cheap, with prices starting from $40. However, jammers are illegal to use in the U.S.
We have previously reported on Wi-Fi jammer-assisted burglaries in Edina, Minnesota. Criminals deployed Wi-Fi jammer(s) to ensure homeowners weren’t alerted of intrusions and that incriminating video evidence wasn’t available to investigators.
If only there was a solution, I don’t know, a cable resistent to jamming the ether, something we could call ether-jamming-resistant-network, in short Ethernet
I know… I am just dreaming :-P
It’s easy to write snarky comments like this, but the truth is running cables isn’t easy, and in some cases simply not possible, at least if you don’t want the cable simply draped over the outside of the house.
Alternative is like… a single gigabyte of local storage on these things
That could just as easily be stolen
It depends how easy to reach the camera is, I can’t see a thief sticking around long enough to set up a ladder to grab the camera, for example.
If they’re setting up a WiFi jammer, a ladder wouldn’t be an absurd thought.
They’d have the jammer already set up, either in a vehicle or on their person. A ladder is much more conspicuous.
As a side business I consult and install security systems in small businesses and homes.
Literally none of them want the cable option, no matter how hard I push it.
The cost of running the cable and the time needed always is the dealbreaker.
Doesn’t matter if its insecure, they just want it to work now and be cheap.
It’s bizarre.
In my last apartment, I literally had to fight to get a DHCP/ethernet + EDGE (yes, really) connection installed.
They kept asking me why I want two 😅
wdym DHCP?
And what’s an “EDGE” supposed to be? I only know that term as the old mobile standard. I believe it was 1G or 2G?DHCP as in it’s an ethernet connection to a residential router that provides the device with connectivity details.
Normally this isn’t considered as secure as a bad actor can cut the power or connecting cables (e.g. If you’re using dsl) to kick your system offline.
And, yeah, my old security system absolutely had an old 2G/EDGE modem to connect and send basic signals (as a fallback, in case of the above power cutting scenario). Was great.
Sorry but I still dont quite get it. Your apartment gave you basically a network inside their residential sorta ISP?
At least in Germany, you are responsible for your own internet provider access and (at least to my knowledge) don’t need to jump through hoops to get something else because the house doesnt do it and it’s your problem.
So if you want a main connection with a WAN-fallback, you just buy a router (or modem router combo) that can do it.
Only exception might be something like coax-based internet but that’s a problem with the provider.
The thieves are jamming WiFi systems and the comments on the article and on Lemmy seem to blame the victim for not being tech savvy. The bulk of Nest/Ring customers do so because the app is easy to use and the cameras easy to setup. By definition the victims are far less likely to be able to defend against this kind of jamming attack.
If the next step in escalation is to shut down the power to the house, will the victim be blamed for not having home batteries and solar panels?
Why not question the viability of WiFi systems in general? Has video ever been more than a deterrent to those scared of cameras? Fearless thieves who know how to deter the systems get free loot for their trouble.
Treat security like we did before 2010; improve physical security to defend instead of relying on deterrence.
LAPD is recommending cutting back shrubbery and coordinating with neighbors for extended leave… As a Los Angeles native, neither of these things happen. After all, high walls make for good neighbors.
Yeah, it’s not really a spike in burglaries so much as a spike in a specific tool being used in burglaries. Whether they use a brick, wifi jammer or a gun they were going to rob someone someway…
Or a hoodie. I’m not sure why it’s a big g deal to WiFi jam a video doorbell when you can also defeat it with a hoodie …. Plus that’s not a burglar alarm.
Whoever is peddling anything as a burglar alarm that depends on WiFi is the real criminal
Jammer also keeps people from getting a notification that someone has come into view on the camera. An away homeowner who sees a person coming through their front door can call the police. With no notification you don’t know until you get home and they’re long gone.
Can’t go wrong with a german sheppard.
Until he gets bored and starts gnawing on the linoleum
That’s what the burglars are for.
I don’t know why everyone doesn’t do what I did. I have a WiFi doorbell camera but I also have 13 other cameras that cover the entire perimeter of my house connected to a PoE switch. My switch is on an UPS and connected to an outlet my natural gas generator cutover powers. My office (includes my miniPC running HAOS and frigate) is also on an UPS plugged into outlets my generator cutover powers in a locked cage inside a vented drawer with a 120mm exhaust fan to keep air circulation going in the drawer. All motion is recorded and saved to my local NAS (that is in the same locked cage) for 30 days and it syncs the recordings directory to the cloud. I have isolated cameras that look like usb chargers that record motion on a loop to 128GB micro sd cards aimed at all entry/exit points, hallways, and points is interest. Everything is pretty much set it and forget it. I get notified of any motion on my property regardless of my location and the jpeg captures are immediately sent to a dedicated email I setup should something unforeseen happens to the recorded video. If my or my partners cell phone is not on the WiFi all the cameras (except the doorbell and isolated ones) are set to siren mode on movement detection and they are surprisingly loud especially if two or three are going off at once.
You’ve absolutely nailed the smug tone some of the comments here have, good work.
Also, imagine explaining all that to my mum, you’d be there all week.
I don’t know why everyone doesn’t do what I did.
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Your setup is fucking insane, and I mean that in a good way. As someone who ran a small team focused on security and who entertained more than one “I totally sploited our OS/let me show you how we suck today so we can fix it” conversations with dizzyingly smart zealots, this setup has excellent layering and coverage. Well fucking done.
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Cost. The same people who say “I’m on a pension so they can’t steal much from me” without realizing their retirement savings and credit rating are the golden fucking goose, also won’t see the benefits to such a cost in capital and setup labour. They won’t do it, and they’ll see us as nutcases until the leopards have eaten their face.
I very much doubt they genuinely have all that, this is pretty obviously sarcasm.
I was making a joke using the absurdity of what I put together as a hobby project over the past couple years as an example to reinforce the comment I replied to. I’ve spent my whole career in IT and it’s absurd the level of knowledge a lot of career or even hobbyist IT folks expect the general public to have.
My generator cost $8k installed.
I ran all the cables myself, still cost $1k for the materials.
Doorbell camera $200.
PoE cameras averages to $174 each or ~$2,500
UPS’s: $300 combined
MiniPC: $500
Cage and mounts: $150
Isolated cameras: $30 ea
SD cards: $15 ea
All told I have over $13k invested easily and it would easily be over twice as much without knowing how to do it myself. Anyone giving folks shit for using WiFi security systems is out of touch.
Fence with a lock on it is a lot cheaper. Crazy how much people will spend on surveillance, given how little it does to achieve deterrence.
I got insurance. I’d help load the truck rather than get shot if someone broke into my house and I was home. This has mostly been a fun project hobby that I can continuously tinker with while working in my office from home. I’ve had a lot of trouble finding a hobby I’m able to stick to that is mentally challenging and rewarding to me. The progressive learning has been great and has me excited to continue with further integration. That said. I will have evidence for police and insurance. I also enjoy watching the deer and other wildlife without going outside which tends to change their behavior.
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Family members will think twice about masturbating in your house.
Nah, they’ll just do it while staring directly at the camera. Gotta get that eye contact.
You just said HAOS and Frigate, and “set it and forget it” in the same statement. As a long time user of both I call shenanigans.
I also think you overestimate the ability of the average person. My mom barely knows how to work her Ring doorbell camera.
That was one of my attempts at playing my hand that I was being sarcastic. I tinker with the shit weekly and yes it is way beyond what any reasonable person should be expected to invest or understand. It’s just become a hobby of mine and I was trying to be funny, which I’m not very good at.
Don’t use wireless for security, PoE or CCTV
Renters have virtually no choice here. I hate it when people state this like it’s some damn easy thing for everyone to do.
Honestly, if I’m renting, I’ll just get renter’s insurance and not bother with doing any security.
As a homeowner, I’m going to do everything I can to avoid making a home insurance claim. As a renter, whatever, not my problem, the insurance can maybe sue the landlord for not securing things properly because it’s their job, not mine, to keep things secure.
Those aren’t always options for renters, hence why wifi security systems are so popular.
Even beyond renting, installing a wifi camera is SO much cheaper than running Ethernet all over your house. And if you need it run through an external wall? Even more money.
Not that expensive to do it yourself. Getting a fish tape and a cheaper Ethernet termination kit would set you back at most $50. Only other tools you need is a drill and most homeowners should already have that. And a really long bit is cheap at harbour freight.
Yup, cost isn’t the issue, time and patience are. In order to run cables down my walls, I’d need to wade through 2-3 feet of insulation fluff in my attic while stepping only on roof cross-beams, all with only like 7 feet of space at the center (way less at the edges). The cable and tools will only cost $100-200, but the whole process is a giant pain to actually do.
Not if you DIY. I just finished a project, not only wiring all rooms for Ethernet, but PoE for 10 exterior cameras.
You can get 500ft Cat 5e boxes off eBay for like ~$20, an extra long 1/2 inch drill bit (for punching through the exterior wall) was like another 20. Most expensive part was probably the metal conduit for the outside runs (I decided to only have 2 or 3 holes to the outside and run the cables in the conduit along the soffit to converge to one of 3 exterior holes for final routing within the house. That was probably 150-250)
All in all after estimating for secondary costs, like screws, brackets, sealant, a caulk gun, ceiling bracket for ceiling routing indoors etc this project was probably <400, pretty cheap as far as home improvement projects go
Most people these days have either a ring doorbell camera or nothing. A very few people have real security cameras hardwired, and even fewer of those have more than 1 camera.
Also, about 1/4 of the ring doorbell cams need their batteries replaced.
PoE/CCTV is def the better option, but youre gonna be hard pressed to get regular folks to make the switch unless this type of burglary becomes endemic.
IMHO, it comes down to your risk, what will make you feel comfortable, and how much money you want to spend. Pulling Ethernet through the walls and patching drywall might not be something you care to do if risk is low.
Also, if someone really wants to not be on camera, they’ll wear a mask, turn the power off at the main panel, etc. That said, there are cameras that can run on battery and store footage locally when they can’t phone home to wherever they deposit video files.
My entire 12 camera system is ethernet only which feeds into my server closet and backed up with a battery that can run it for 5 hours. The video clips are sent to telegram for backup.
Uh, how do you use telegram for backup?
You can create and set up telegram bots for your own use
Right, but they offer basically unlimited storage or how does that specific bit work? I wasn’t aware you could put meaningful amounts of data anywhere using a telegram bot.
And why not just… get cloud storage? Backblaze is something like $6/month for 1TB of data, which is more than enough space for an interesting amount of off-site video backup.
Yes, if you have a $10M villa in LA where you store your priceless art collection invest in hard security. For the average person who just needs video for the insurance company for when some meth head steals their bike from the garage, it’s a great solution.
Honestly, deadbolts and keeping the garage closed would get that meth head to go to the next house.
If you send a claim to the insurance company for a stolen bike or something, you’re going to pay way more in house insurance than whatever the bike cost. The only time you should be making an insurance claim is for a massive loss, like a fire, flood, etc. The video evidence should instead go to the police so they can track the perp down and maybe recover your stuff.
While still hating this living dystopia, I do appreciate some of cyberpunk headlines we get.
Me being cheap pays off; wifi cameras are expensive as fuck so I just have wired ones that don’t do anything on the Internet.
I wish that apps notified you when your camera has been unreachable for too long, but at least that’s a hint that a jammer may have been involved. Cameras won’t stop them, but a the best setups would rely on wires and hidden local and cloud storage for recordings and alerts.
apps notified you when your camera has been unreachable for too long
The volume of false positives this produced would render the system significantly less useful.
POE is where it’s @
Yes, he kicked down the Point Of Entry. Also, Power Over Ethernet is the best. It is known.
And here I thought someone was just saying they like path of exile.
I was thinking Pillars of Eternity. PoE is always on-topic. :)
It’s even easier to cut the Internet cables going into a house.
Never lived somewhere with buried infrastructure huh?
This but unironically. Burying lines costs money and who is going to spend it?
Uh, no it doesn’t? Just use a shovel, wedge open the dirt like 6-12 inches, and Bob’s your uncle. I recommend also putting in conduit so you can fish another line if you ever need to.
Just use a shovel
On asphalt and concrete?
I would reply, but you clearly are more interested in making your own answers for yourself.
If I had a PoE surveillance system I’d have it saving to a local server.
I got great pictures of the people breaking into my van. It did nothing to help catch them.
Well, if you got a license plate, maybe the police would pretend like they care.
Thieves who use cars during thefts usually use stolen cars. Yeah, I was able to get a license plate of a car that dropped them off once, it didn’t seem to do much since it hasn’t stopped them from returning.
Well, it’ll hopefully help them connect crimes and nab those thieves eventually. It certainly doesn’t hurt.
A license plate for what?
The license plate of the thieves who stole from the van. Just one thief is probably a drug addict, more than one is a crew that likely has a getaway car nearby.
However, jammers are illegal to use in the U.S.
What is the point of adding this bit for an article about burglaries?
They should make burglaries illegal too!
Because it’s relevant? Is this not factual information that readers may or may not have known?
The availability of hardware changes by a not-negligent degree based on the legality of acquiring it.
Curious readers likely find information indicating that these shouldn’t be readily available at your local big box store to be pertinent information.
It does and it doesn’t.
Any microwave with the door rigged open is a super effective Wi-Fi jammer. Everything coalesced on 2.4GHz instead of licensing their own radio spectrum making absolute mountains of overlap. It’s harder jam nearly everything else. ( Not much harder, software radios are super cheap, but you at least need more electronics knowledge than a screwdriver and tape. )
Because Californians love writing laws as a knee jerk reaction to the crime de jour.
Some pearl-clutching local will go to their state legislature and demand that WiFi jamming be banned despite the fact that the FCC is all over that shit. They keep passing redundant gun control laws in the same way for the same reasons.
While I don’t dispute that California has a tendency to have obnoxious firearms law:
https://legalbeagle.com/7402613-california-sword-law.html
Surprisingly, it’s entirely legal to carry a sword in public in California, as long as you are the wearer is not brandishing it or concealing it. In other words, if the sword is carried in a sheath suspended from the wearer’s waist, it is legal to have in public.
That being said, from memory going through California’s code, I believe that they explicitly have katana restrictions, along with some other restrictions on Japanese weapons, probably for the same reason that a number of states have switchblade restrictions: there were movies that hyped up the “gangster” aspect.
kagis
Hmm. No, and it looks like the nunchucks ban was repealed during the last few years, so they may have re-legalized katana carry along with that.
https://usanunchaku.com/california-legalized-nunchaku/
For over 50 years the state of California has made nunchaku illegal or restricted to only state licensed martial arts schools. As of 9/30 2021 this restriction in California has been repealed with the passing of CA Senate Bill No 827 and has resulted in California Legalized Nunchaku for everyone.
Now all California residents may purchase nunchaku without restriction or needing to be a member of a martial arts school training in the art of nunchaku. Here at American Nunchaku Company we welcome our new and old Californian customers and invite you to stop by and check out our collection of custom handmade nunchaku.
Shruikens – ninja stars – remain banned in California, though.
One can but imagine the plague of ninja being held back by this legislation.
Oh man, I would’ve hated to live in California during the Ninja epidemic.
Something tells me that systems will just have a strong dummy wireless signal act as a tripwire and then it goes down, it triggers stuff…even super low end stuff could implement it.
A massive net to catch the baddies
Some systems already have that. Replaced a switch yesterday and re-arranged some things on my network board and got a HomeKit notification that some things were offline and when it came back. Knowing when something goes offline isn’t as useful as keeping things up though. With something like a hardwired camera/NVR, even if your ISP service is interrupted the cameras can still record, and you can put a UPS there to keep things going, even if the rest of the network is down.
That’s one of the reason I went with a PoE camera. Just make sure your network is isolated so people can’t connect to your internal network from the camera Ethernet cable.
It doesn’t hurt to hide or disguise the cameras to make them difficult to spot. That way, burglars wouldn’t even try to find and break their server if they’re not noticed.
Nah, cameras should be very visible so burglars see them and just go to the next house.
Or vice versa, connect to your cameras from the rest of your network.
That’s why wireless security devices are a joke. And it is not only WiFi, this is BlueTooth and other protocols like that, too.
Good security (and common sense, too) would be to have such devices wired up. And check the spectrum for jammers and raise an alarm about that, too.
In my big American metro area, the burglars usually mask up and roll in with swapped plates, a car they stole, or a car they got off a Kia boy for $100-$200. They’re tough to catch in the act or identify with video surveillance, even with a new hardwired or pre-WiFi hardwired system.
Own a musket for home defense, since that’s what the founding fathers intended. Four ruffians break into my house. “What the devil?” As I grab my powdered wig and Kentucky rifle. I blow a golf ball sized hole through the first man, he’s dead on the spot. I draw my pistol on the second man, miss him entirely because it’s smoothbore and nails the neighbors dog. I have to resort to the cannon mounted at the top of the stairs loaded with grape shot, “Tally ho lads” the grape shot shreds two men in the blast, the sound and extra shrapnel set off car alarms. Fix bayonet and charge the last terrified rapscallion. He Bleeds out waiting on the police to arrive since triangular bayonet wounds are impossible to stitch up. Just as the founding fathers intended.
Worked at an old job where one guy, that had access to the router settings, would disable the Blink Cameras so he could forge his time cards.
Owners ended up realizing the cameras would only be disabled when he was on shift.
I worked at Walmart ages ago and one of the overnight assistant managers would do this and then steal cash out of the cash office until he finally got caught.
i know nothing; would a hardwired connection from the cameras to the router solve this?
Yes but the camera should be in a place that can’t be physically tampered with easily since someone could theoretically unplug the camera and plug into your home network and see all your computers or other devices as if they had stolen your WiFi password. A small risk but it’s better to hardwire it somewhere they would need a ladder to get to or get a camera system that connects to a central box inside the house.
Well, if it’s not on a WiFi network, it’ll be fine. CCTV is a great example of this. Just wire up some cameras, encrypt the harddrive and put it somewhere difficult to get to. Only way to disable all cameras at once would be an EMP. There are kits for a few hundred $ and all the data stays local
Or just flip off the main switch on your breaker if they can get to that.
Totally. Get a PSU? Or use solar with a PSU. Or batteries. Always a mitigation for the mitigation lol
Easiest way to avoid this bullshit is to install wired cameras, and such a way that they are not easy to access/cut.
I know someones gonna come in and be all “BUHBUHBUT YOU CAN JUST DESTROY THE CAMERAS” and yeah, thats true.
but you cant destroy the camera from 3 blocks over, you have to get right up on them, and your face/vehicle/other helpful information may just well be caught and recorded before you do. Unlike wifi jamming, which could be done from streets away.
Wireless cameras and “smart” doorbells shouldn’t even be seen as security devices to begin with. They’re for verifying your Amazon delivery and checking on the dog and nothing more.
exactly. If anything they are insecurity devices considering how many 3rd parties typically have access to them without your knowledge or permission.
