Bug Bounty Programs is a new technique used by security firms to effectively find the vulnerabilities in their products. These vulnerabilities are crucial to identify and address to prevent the systems to be accessed by external hackers.

In this program, ethical hackers are recruited to test the systems and find faults under legal terms and conditions. Their findings are not allowed to be revealed to the public.

Steps to increase engagement

The security community has five steps to increase engagement which are:

• Performing code reviews and penetration testing.
• Assessing your organization’s ability to respond to any vulnerabilities.
• Developing a legal policy protecting the company and the legal researcher.

Companies have been advised by the Nation Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), which is a division of the U.S. Department of Commerce to revise their process of identifying, analyzing and responding to any weaknesses in their security systems.

Hikvision has developed various cybersecurity programs to support its partners to respond to vulnerabilities and reduce the risk of surveillance systems being hacked. There are steps that show how to hack your company’s Hikvision recorder using an exploit tool.

The Hikvision backdoor exploit tool was developed to exploit a weakness found in the security systems developed by them. This vulnerability in the system was detected in Hikvision IP cameras in 2017 on the cameras that use old firmware. However, since then the bug has been corrected.

This tool with the name “Hikvision Password Reset” can be used by a hacker to change the device’s credentials such as username and password. To use this tool, one must only know the IP address and the port that the surveillance camera is using.

This vulnerability allows direct access to the camera as the administrator and can send commands to any device connected to the network.

Steps to hack your own Camera

The following steps can be followed to use the Hikvision backdoor exploit, using the “Hikvision Password Reset”:

• Step 1: Type the camera IP address and port.
• Step 2: Click “Get user list”.
• Step 3: Select the user to change the password.
• Step 4: Type a new password.

After completing these steps, type the camera IP and port on any web browser. The new username and password credentials just created will allow access to the system. To access the cameras, first, change the admin password. This completes the process of accessing the Hikvision IP camera.

Conclusion

The steps given and backdoor exploit tool provided are not to encourage unethical behavior. Rather, it is to test any vulnerability in your company’s IP cameras so it can be corrected in the next upgrade. Therefore, this can be useful for any company in the security community.