Back to News
Advertisement
Advertisement

⚡ Community Insights

Discussion Sentiment

46% Positive

Analyzed from 1720 words in the discussion.

Trending Topics

#doorbell#door#ring#home#internet#actually#more#camera#security#own

Discussion (88 Comments)Read Original on HackerNews

voidUpdate•1 day ago
Can you actually access any of the doorbells on the internet with this? It reads to me like you need physical access to extract the signing keys etc over the debug port before you can actually impersonate the device
porshia•1 day ago
You can enumerate them against the API.
interludead•1 day ago
I think the distinction is: physical access helps bootstrap the research, but the resulting key/signing logic is not device-specific
bdavbdav•1 day ago
Is this not more targeted at “badly developed IOT” generally as opposed to “your doorbell”? Bad title.
user01815-2•1 day ago
Awesome, as it doesn't actually work from the street door right now, and I can't get the condo management company to fix it. Guess I just need to post a QR code outside?
bookofjoe•about 2 hours ago
Not if you don’t have one.
tzs•1 day ago
OT: do many people who come to your door actually ring your doorbell? 95% of people who come to my door, which has a doorbell and does not have a knocker, knock.

Do people just prefer knocking nowadays? Have Ring type doorbells become so common that people don't realize that a simple pushbutton beside the door with no camera can be a doorbell?

chrisandchris•about 8 hours ago
I think that eeally depends on regions. Where I am located, nobody will ever knock and everybody uses the door bell.
philipallstar•1 day ago
Can ring this Temu doorbell.
SAI_Peregrinus•1 day ago
An attack that could remotely ring my old-fashioned hard-wired doorbell would be really cool to read about. It's the classic electromechanical style with an AC line transformer wired directly between the chime & the button.
maeln•1 day ago
If you want to do some fun hacking project, Temu and similar websites are a trove of insecure cheap IoT devices made with almost 0 security consideration. Security camera, car chargers, sport tracking devices, etc.

If you are a bad actor, that is also probably a very easy way to find new ways to enroll devices in your botnet.

porshia•1 day ago
So many of them are hosting some sort of server they /have/ to talk back to. Wouldn't be so bad if they just acted entirely self contained...

So the question is, what is the vendors benefit from running these servers.

vachina•1 day ago
I think they’re more secure by the virtue of being niche. Nobody will build an exploit chain to sniff for and target these devices.
maeln•1 day ago
By the virtue of being cheap garbage, they actually sell very well and can be found quite a lot in the wild. So they are not that niche.
porshia•1 day ago
Would be interesting to know if we can flash a new firmware onto this. Funnily enough I think I have one of these in my "shit to poke at" pile
6510•1 day ago
You could take a picture from the real footage, remove the people from it and insert yourself into the front yard. Then when they open the door act confused that you cant see them.

edit: my doorbell resets if you hold it down for 10 seconds then it takes wifi credentials with a QR code and thinks you are it's new owner.

iso1631•1 day ago
add in a "ghost"
stackghost•1 day ago
I'd be shocked if the Ring doorbells were materially more secure.

I sit firmly in the "only smart device is my printer and I keep a loaded gun next to it in case it makes a weird noise" camp.

nickt•1 day ago
You should probably get a cheap IoT camera to keep an eye on that printer!
harry8•1 day ago
not "get", build it with an esp32 & Tasmota (or whatever).

https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005010326236256.html

Bilal_io•1 day ago
And then bug a camera to monitor the first camera
bonestamp2•1 day ago
Exactly. All my IoT stuff is on it's own wifi network and VLAN because I don't trust the initial or long term security of some of these manufacturers.
tehlike•1 day ago
I have a poe reolink camera doorbell that I am yet to install...
inventor7777•1 day ago
I've got the Reolink PoE doorbell and it works great!
gerdesj•1 day ago
Me too.

You can put it on a separate VLAN with no internet access and watch it via your own app eg Home Assistant, Frigate, Zoneminder or whatever.

random_savv•1 day ago
Your printer doesn't make weird noises?
teddyh•1 day ago
The original quote from 2019 is “an unexpected noise”:

• <https://imgur.com/6wbgy2L>

• <https://old.reddit.com/r/ProgrammerHumor/comments/aloi5v/pro...>

m463•1 day ago
All bets are off if you use unapproved third-party toner cartridges...
Bilal_io•1 day ago
Nothing unexpected or I am not used to
mrsvanwinkle•1 day ago
have you tried putting a loaded wep next to it?
taneq•1 day ago
Nope, just the usual things a printer mumbles to itself when it thinks it’s alone.
aidenn0•1 day ago
I would love if my printer was more dumb. It's cheaper to buy an AIO than a separate document (with duplex) and flatbed scanner.
stackghost•1 day ago
Nowadays smartphones do credible document scanning for most consumer use cases. iPhones had this built in before COVID at the latest.

But the printer comment was actually a reference to a meme about how different groups of people relate to technology.

Nobody on the Internet can ring my doorbell because it's a dumb button that connects to a dumb, literal bell.

aidenn0•1 day ago
> Nowadays smartphones do credible document scanning for most consumer use cases. iPhones had this built in before COVID at the latest.

Now do 40 pages, front-and-back, with your smartphone.

pests•1 day ago
I mean yes and no. If I knew your address, I could 100% ring your doorbell from the Internet.

CTRL+T, doordash.com, McDonalds, "ring doorbell please", pay, done.

I know this isn't what you mean, but, humans are buttons (or button pressers?)

themafia•1 day ago
The Battlestar Galactica rule. I find comfort in it as well.
BLKNSLVR•1 day ago
Picturing the scene from Where The Buffalo Roam.

... but I think that was a fax machine.

kotaKat•1 day ago
Funny thing, that. They actually have Activation Lock (of sorts).

I regret it now but a few years back someone had moved into a home, dumped their Ring doorbell that came with the house, and we shoved it on our house. When we went to set it up Ring blocked the setup attempt because it was account bound.

... Apparently if you call Ring to release it (they can), frontline CS can see the entire log of when the doorbell was online, when it was last rung, and used that information to go "oh, it hasn't been rang in like eight months" to decide that I wasn't some criminal and that I can set up the doorbell myself.

sandeepkd•1 day ago
Anyone is probably a hyperbole here, regardless its accessible via internet, it is always in the category of relatively secure. Applies to pretty much every device connected to internet. Absolute security is a myth, it does not exists.

One can argue that a particular manufacturer is relatively more secure than other, however as long as the software is changing/evolving, eventually it will opens up the possibility/window to hack it

consp•1 day ago
While true in general, this devices approach to security is an open doorway with a curtain in it to prevent access with they key hanging next to it in case there accidentally is a door. The security footprint is so low it should be called out as non existent.
Advertisement
EtienneDeLyon•1 day ago
I wonder how I would feel about that, if I was alone at home, and lonely.

Would it cheer me that people were reaching out and ringing my doorbell?

Or would it make me sad because I would be reminded that there was not a friend ringing at the door?

mrsvanwinkle•1 day ago
noticed how spam has that utility for many elderly (which further incentivizes the abuse)
b3lvedere•1 day ago
Or an even worse idea: What if ads started ringing your doorbell suddenly?
DonHopkins•1 day ago
I'd like my doorbell camera to have a cat detector and a meow detector so when my cats meow at the door, it rings the doorbell. My cats have gps collars and distinctive fur and meows, so it could double check so other cats can't spam me. That way each cat could have its own distinctive ring (like their distinctive meow, amplified).
GreenTim•1 day ago
Please, It's much safer to keep them indoors where they can't kill songbirds, crap on the neighbours kids lawn or get run over.
TazeTSchnitzel•1 day ago
Am I the only one who eventually got irritated by the LLM-like writing style? It's not quite the usual fare, but it became hard to ignore by the end.
sen•1 day ago
I find it completely unreadable and give up within a paragraph or 2 every single time.

I say that as someone who uses LLMs daily too, and isn't a hater of them. Nothing wrong with using an LLM to help come up with content wording or to proof-read your writing etc etc, but just copy-pasting LLM output directly into a blog is lazy and instantly signals that it's not worth my time to read it.

grokx•1 day ago
Yes, I stopped reading here:

> $12 on the front. Whole-network compromise on the back.

Too bad since the topic on its own seems very interesting.

holistio•1 day ago
English is not my native language but I consider myself a fairly advanced speaker - I hold a C2 level language certificate, lived in London, etc.

These are exactly the kinds of sentences that would have gotten us outstanding grades as students of the language.

I used to be proud of sentences like the latter in the above quote. I can't fathom how learning languages will change in the coming years.

deaux•about 11 hours ago
> These are exactly the kinds of sentences that would have gotten us outstanding grades as students of the language.

You're abusing "us" here. There are billions of ESL learners, and the group you're part of who receive outstanding grades for that kind of sentence makes up a tiny percentage. The overwhelming majority would not.

AshamedCaptain•1 day ago
> These are exactly the kinds of sentences that would have gotten us outstanding grades as students of the language.

Not at all? They are not even full sentences...

I get that you might like the style, but there is no need for hyperbole.

Retr0id•1 day ago
Sentences with that structure might be praised but semantically it is nonsense.

Edit: except for prescriptivists who hate sentence fragments

interludead•1 day ago
The most depressing part is that none of this sounds exotic
NetMageSCW•1 day ago
That would be impressive as my doorbell is hardwired from a button to a transformer and bell in a closet.
nottorp•1 day ago
Mine is not only hardwired, but I mounted it kinda wrong and you need to press the dead center for it to ring :)
noufalibrahim•1 day ago
It's the only way doorbells (and almost all other appliances) should be.
interludead•1 day ago
Your doorbell has an excellent threat model
ErroneousBosh•1 day ago
Mine too. Not only that, the breaker for the transformer is switched off because the postman used to come right as my then-2-year-old was going for his nap. He's nearly 6 now and has not had an afternoon nap for a long time, and at some point I'll flip the breaker back on when I'm getting my jacket out of the hall cupboard.

But I didn't do that yesterday, I don't think I'll do it today, and it's not looking good for tomorrow either.

fortran77•1 day ago
I could train a crow to fly over and peck it.
ta8903•1 day ago
Or just order some pizza to his address.
DonHopkins•1 day ago
TaskCrow.com
plufz•1 day ago
Don’t use those expensive escrow services, much cheaper to keep your own crows!
compounding_it•1 day ago
Electromagnetic triggers. Find the right frequency and resonate it.
b3lvedere•1 day ago
Since i like tech, once i was also interested in a smart doorbell or lock. My wife very much disliked the idea, because she thought it could prevent us to even enter our own house when the tech fails.

Then one day i watched my neighbour trying to get into his own house, because his smart lock and doorbell system failed horribly. This took several hours. It started raining. I learned a lot of new swear words from my neighbours wife which were directed to her husband.

Once again, my wife was totally right :)

simondotau•1 day ago
Airtasker. Boom.
ildon•1 day ago
This is a security concern as well. I'd argue even worse than the internet connected ones. Anyone at your front door (or where the button is) can easily know if you're at home, and take advantage if you're not. With the internet connected ones, you can always pretend.
Wilder7977•1 day ago
Anyone physically near your house can just see you leaving the house and know you are not at home, besides all the other signs.

There is no control against this, and it shouldn't be something you rely on to prevent break-ins or burglaries (if you were thinking of such threats).

hnlmorg•1 day ago
I don’t think anyone is fooled into thinking people are home when the home owner “answers the door” via their internet connected doorbell.

If anything, I’d say that’s a bigger give away than someone not answering a traditional door bell given people used to not hear them even when home, all the time (particularly in bigger houses).

mulderc•1 day ago
I would have thought this but was amazed at the number of times people would think I was home while talking to them via my doorbell. I have neighbor that told people I was rude to not come to the door and didn’t know I was talking to her from work.
mrweasel•1 day ago
From my experience with package delivery I can tell you this is not how it works. Press the button, door doesn't open that instance, ergo no one is home.

My home office is in the other end of the house, it takes ~20-30 seconds for me to get to the door. That is more time than UPS grants you.

consp•1 day ago
There are way more indicators than just a doorbell. Closed curtains, car not in driveway, lights out ...
mulderc•1 day ago
Well my curtains and light open and close on a schedule so they won’t tell them much. Also who can afford to drive to work anymore?