How to use Google to find private webcams
24/11/06 14:58 ::
Science &
Technology
Google (or Uncle Google) is a wonderful tool. But as
with all technology, Google can be used maliciously.
Do you have a webcam in your house so you can keep an
eye on your cats over the www? Well. For your sake I
hope that camera is password protected.
Software that allows you to view your webcam over the web works just like a webpage — it stores documents on your computer (or some other computer, if that's the case) and when you enter the URL to view the webcam you're requesting a certain HTML document that incorporates the link to the webcam feed. So, when we know the folder hierarchy of standard webcam software — we can use our dear uncle Google to search for that particular string. If preventive measures haven't been taken, the Googlecrawlers have probably found those documents.
Here's a very nice view of a countrytown in Switzerland:
Click the image to view the feed.
Of course, that Swiss cam is probably a public feed — but what about something more private? Here's someone's bedroom:
I'm not going to link to this webcam, you can find it yourself. And yes, those controls work. I could pan and tilt the camera. Imagine being on your way to bed and suddenly the camera starts following your moves? A positively unpleasant experience.
So, there are probably a bunch of different search strings you can feed to uncle Google, but here are the two I used:
inurl:/view/index.shtml
inurl:"ViewerFrame?Mode="
All you have to do is search for those strings with Google to get tens of thousands of different feeds. Scary, eh?
Software that allows you to view your webcam over the web works just like a webpage — it stores documents on your computer (or some other computer, if that's the case) and when you enter the URL to view the webcam you're requesting a certain HTML document that incorporates the link to the webcam feed. So, when we know the folder hierarchy of standard webcam software — we can use our dear uncle Google to search for that particular string. If preventive measures haven't been taken, the Googlecrawlers have probably found those documents.
Here's a very nice view of a countrytown in Switzerland:

Click the image to view the feed.
Of course, that Swiss cam is probably a public feed — but what about something more private? Here's someone's bedroom:

I'm not going to link to this webcam, you can find it yourself. And yes, those controls work. I could pan and tilt the camera. Imagine being on your way to bed and suddenly the camera starts following your moves? A positively unpleasant experience.
So, there are probably a bunch of different search strings you can feed to uncle Google, but here are the two I used:
inurl:/view/index.shtml
inurl:"ViewerFrame?Mode="
All you have to do is search for those strings with Google to get tens of thousands of different feeds. Scary, eh?
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