China’s tech invasion: How the CCP uses CCTV camera systems to spy on people in foreign countries
China’s tech invasion: How the CCP uses CCTV camera systems to spy on people in foreign countries
There has been a lot of chatter of late about CCTV cameras and exactly how secure they are, especially the ones that have been made in China or by Chinese companies. At the centre of this chatter is Hikvision, the world’s largest surveillance equipment manufacturer.
The controversy around Hikvision is that they facilitate the mass surveillance of the Chinese people, especially the Uyghurs. Hikvision has fitted out most Uighar concentration and “reeducation” camps with their CCTVs and other surveillance equipment. Hikvision also has a system in Chinese prisons, that records interrogations, and runs them through a software developed by Hikvision and the CCP, which then creates data points that help the CCP in codifying what is problematic and “typical Uyghur” behaviour.
However, that is not the worst that Hikvision has been accused of. Hikvision may be at the centre of a much larger problem – unauthorised surveillance and aiding state espionage in jurisdictions outside China.
As of 2021, Hikvision has over 31 per cent of the global market share when it comes to CCTV cameras. In 2020, the Chinese CCTV manufacturer installed over 36 million cameras through its subsidiaries and partners all across the world, mostly outside China. Some of these cameras are placed in crucial government buildings, which often deal with sensitive information.
China has often been accused of using CCTV systems outside their jurisdiction to spy on people of interest, mainly government officials, diplomats and people who help create national and foreign policies for their respective countries. But how do they go about it, especially when they don’t have access to those CCTV cameras, physically?
How do CCTV camera systems get compromised?
Depending on the type of security system a company or an organisation uses, CCTV cameras can be classified into two basic types. One would be the traditional CCTV system, which just uses a basic camera and some form of a recording feature that stores files locally on a hard drive. These systems usually don’t incorporate any smart connected features such as cloud storage.
Next up, we have systems that come with a lot of connected features. By upselling customers on features like live monitoring, cloud storage and low-cost maintenance, security system providers often equip their customers with cameras that are very sophisticated computers with a network themselves.
Also read: China’s Hikvision directors under investigation over disclosures
What happens in the case of a “smart” CCTV system is, that as the camera records something, it stores a copy of it on a local storage device, if the end-user has requested it to be set up in that way, or stores the recordings on a cloud server that the end user can access from anywhere in the world, as long as they have the credentials to a certain account and a working internet connection.
In the case of a smart CCTV camera system, it actually boils down to where the service provider has placed their servers and in what geographical areas are your recordings stored. If they are stored in China, or any country where China has a strategic presence, you can be sure that the CCP has access to the footage.
In case the footage is stored locally, onsite where the system has been installed, or on a server away from the site of instalment, that is maintained by the service provider, two things can happen – either China will let their legions of hackers attack where your footage has been stored. Or worse, the equipment manufacturer will share your footage with the CCP, without informing you.
Smart CCTV solutions are compromised, by nature
Smart CCTV solutions come compromised by nature. These security systems have often been found sending data to servers located inside mainland China.
As per a 2021 report by Rai Italia, an airport in Rome discovered that one of their security systems, which consisted of over 100 Hikvision CCTV cameras, was sending huge packets of data to a chain of IP addresses that ended in China. An analysis of the packets sent revealed that the data sent was video footage from those CCTVs.
Hikvision of course refused that they received any data, but went on to accept that they had received unusual and unauthorised requests from their system installed at the airport, and blamed it on faulty code that was implemented in a routine systems update, that was conducted remotely. The Italian airport in question was not aware of any such update that was scheduled.
The British government, upon learning about these events, ordered an audit of the security systems that they had in place. Biometrics and Surveillance Camera Commissioner, Professor Fraiser Samson found that there were at least a million Hikvision CCTV cameras and thousands of CCTV systems and networks with Hikvision components in and around London, most of which were covering areas where sensitive central government work was being carried out and British intelligence services were functioning.
Smart CCTV solutions that get connected to the internet in any way, for any reason whatsoever, are highly likely to be compromised. In such a scenario, it becomes important to have a local, onsite or better yet, personal server when your security footage gets stored.
Having said that, it is important to note that even personal, onsite storage does not guarantee total security from hackers.
How China’s army of hackers fit into all of this
This is pretty straightforward if you think about it. China has one of the largest and strongest army of cyber attackers and hackers. There have been numerous instances where China and the CCP have ordered and coordinated massive DDoS or distributed denial-of-service attacks and hacked into private as well as government networks, either to steal data or to compromise vital infrastructure.
Although your security system provider may not be compromised today, or let’s say that they don’t actively share your data and your footage with government agencies, especially China, that does not mean that the situation will be like that forever.
Chinese hackers have often targeted security system providers and their servers to gain access to recorded videos. Moreover, there have been numerous instances where Chinese hackers have hacked into local onsite storage systems at embassies and offices dealing in foreign policies of a number of adversarial countries, and sometimes of their allies as well, through some vulnerability or the other.
Once these hackers have the security footage they need, it can be used for a wide variety of activities. The video can be used to create deepfake videos and then circulate in an area to create a tense environment. Or, the videos could be used to honeypot or blackmail certain individuals to behave in a certain way, or to reveal sensitive information.
At the very least, the footage may be used to gain some other insightful data as a part of a much larger, and potentially potent scheme.
The only way to protect your security footage, especially now that everything is stored digitally, is to have strong firewalls protecting your local, on-site storage, and to limit the direction of the traffic. Ideally, security systems should operate on a network independent of all other networks that you may be using. This means not using your present internet connection for your CCTV security system. Also, it helps if your security system network has a system set up that actively monitors what data packets leave or get out.
This article is the first part of a series of articles that explores how China came to dominate the CCTV security systems all over the world, and how exactly they leverage their position and stranglehold over the industry in espionage and spying.
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