A Russian website that was exposed this week in the UK for providing live feeds from thousands of baby monitors, stand-alone webcams and CCTV systems has also been broadcasting images from Maltese IP cameras.

Although the website has, since this week's revelations, been taken down, we were able to find footage broadcast by the website from five locations around Malta: from what appears to be a nail bar in Valletta, a sweet shop, a driveway of what appears to be a private residence, a store room and a residential kitchen.

Although the number of examples still online as of Friday paled in comparison to the number of feeds from, for example, the UK and the US, we have found several other websites in cyberspace offering the same kind of live feed - some listing up to dozens of feeds from Malta.

What is of even more concern about the Russian website that has been in the eye of a virtual cyberstorm is that it also provides exact locations of the feeds through Google Maps.

This week it emerged that footage from more than 100 countries is being streamed from bedrooms - children's bedrooms, in many cases, office buildings, commercial establishments and even stables and barns.

Experts have a message for anyone with a webcam, baby monitor or home security camera: change your password now, because feeds from the cameras are being posted online by a Russian website.

The site takes advantage of the fact that camera users receive default passwords to start devices working initially - such as '1234'. Many manufacturers also put default passwords online, according to the UK's Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) on Thursday.

"The ability to access footage remotely is both an internet camera's biggest selling point and, if not set up correctly, potentially its biggest security weakness," said Simon Rice, ICO's group manager for technology, in a statement. "Remember, if you can access your video footage over the internet, then what is stopping someone else from doing the same?"

The ICO is joining its counterparts in the United States, China, Australia and Canada in warning consumers about the Russian site, which offers live streams together with the coordinates of where the cameras are located. It declined to publicly identify the site for fear of driving traffic to it.

The authorities say they have no jurisdiction in Russia, so it is simpler to warn people about the site than it is to try to take the site down.

"I will do what I can, but don't wait for me to have sorted this out," said Information Commissioner Christopher Graham. "The action is in your own hands, if you have one of these pieces of kit."

As well as setting hard-to-guess passwords instead of the default one that came with the device, camera owners are also being advised to check their equipment and turn off remote access if they do not need it.

One wireless camera maker, Foscam, reiterated this advice, pointing out that it has altered the software it uses to force customers to choose a new password in place of the default one.

The company condemned what it called "a gross violation of people's privacy."

"An analogy best describing this would be just because someone leaves their window open it does not give permission for an unauthorised individual to set up a camera outside their window and broadcast the feed worldwide," said chief operating officer Chase Rhymes in a statement.

The site in question lists the feeds both by country and by device manufacturer.

The kit has not been "hacked", rather software and search tools have been used to scan the net for feeds that can be accessed using the cameras' default settings.

China-based Foscam was the most commonly listed brand, followed by Linksys and then Panasonic.

"We are still trying to determine which Linksys IP cameras are referenced on the site," said a spokeswoman from the US firm.

"We believe they are older Linksys IP cameras that are no longer being manufactured.

"For these cameras we do not have a way to force customers to change their default passwords. We will continue to educate consumers that changing default passwords is extremely important to protect themselves from unwanted intruders.

"Our newer cameras display a warning to users who have not changed the default password that they receive whenever they log into the camera, until they set a new password."

Panasonic added that its CCTV kit was also designed to encourage users to set their own log-in credentials.

"Every time a user logs on to our system, they are prompted to change their default password," said Sean Taylor, a security executive at the firm.

"We would urge all users to change passwords regularly, in order to maintain the integrity of the system."

Foscam added that its current range of products also requested owners to set their own passwords.

This is not the first time problems with Foscam cameras have been highlighted. In 2013, a family based in Houston, Texas, revealed that they had heard a voice shouting lewd comments at their two-year old child coming out of their Foscam baby monitor. The company provided a software fix the same year that prompted owners to revise default login credentials, but many owners are unlikely to have installed it.

The Russia-based website has cleared all its data and no live feeds are available. The only message left on it yesterday was: "Programmer is looking for a good remote job. Skills: Linux, FreeBSD, C/C++, Python, MySQL".

 

Note: We have intentionally omitted the website addresses from this article, neither have we reproduced any still images of Maltese feeds retrieved earlier this week

 

 

Password tips

Choose words that don't appear in a dictionary

Hackers can pre-calculate the encrypted forms of whole dictionaries and easily reverse engineer your password.

 

Use a mixture of unusual characters

You can use a word or phrase that you can easily remember but where characters are substituted, such as Myd0gha2B1g3ars!

 

Have different passwords for different sites and systems

If hackers compromise one system you do not want them having the key to unlock all your other accounts.

 

Keep them safely

With multiple passwords it is tempting to write them down and carry them around with you. Better to use some form of secure password vault on your phone.