[haser_au]

A school system, where this level of potential and passion goes unnoticed and unharnessed for good, is a broken system. The full extent of their exploits remain unclear, due to ongoing legal action, but it should have been detected well and truly before it got to the CCTV access stage.

[amelius]

I'm wondering how one would break into a CCTV system without physical access. Are these systems connected to the internet?

[vezycash]

If you're referring to the boys, they found a sticky note on a guard's laptop containing the login details.

For general cctv, many are installed to allow monitoring while away from the house. Nanny cams for example.

Installing cctv to an existing network will put it online automatically.

The most important issue to consider is these devices - routers, cameras, alarms, locks... come with default passwords. And almost no one changes them. So anyone who knows which port (Shodan search engine, port scanner) to look has a high chance of getting entry.

[amelius]

Ok, thanks. I was under the impression that CCTV systems are always "closed systems", in the sense that one can watch the recorded video only after an incident (where an authority has to provide the password).

[snazz]

This might not be relevant with modern systems, but about five years ago security camera systems were common where the individual cameras were connected to the local network and to watch them you would open some special program on a Windows machine. The cameras themselves had administration pages served over HTTP and they ran an ancient version of Linux.

Although I never tried, I’m guessing that all you would have to do is guess a password (not hard if it’s in a spreadsheet) to a UDP stream accessible through VLC. If you couldn’t guess the password, the software on the cameras is so old that you could find a plethora of exploits to use to get root and reset the password.