I have a question about the security of CCTV footage storage that was sparked by a scene from 'Mission Impossible - Dead Reckoning.' In the movie, the antagonist's AI hacks into security cameras to erase critical footage. It got me thinking: if there's a CCTV system that saves footage to a hard drive while also streaming to an external server, could malware really get into that hard drive and alter the footage? Additionally, if each camera had its own SD card for local storage, could a malicious AI hack into that as well? I'm curious about the real-world possibilities of this scenario, given I don't know much about IT.
2 Answers
Honestly, anything that runs software can potentially be hacked. However, access to a system is necessary first. You'd need physical or network access to alter footage on a computer. It's a chain: you gather intelligence on the target, find a way in (like exploiting security holes), and then there's a way to retrieve data. If the security system is locked down well, accessing it becomes really hard, even for an AI.
That’s what I’m thinking! The movie implied that the AI could change data directly, but if the original footage is stored locally on each camera's SD card, wouldn’t that preserve the truth if the central system is hacked?
You can't directly hack into security footage itself. The footage is stored on a computer or device, and that's what can be compromised, not the hard drive itself without going through a device first. If a CCTV system is storing footage on a hard drive, you’d need to hack into the computer that manages it. The hard drive alone is not directly accessible over a network without that middleman device.
So if I have 10 cameras that send data to a central server, then yes, if you access that server, you could theoretically edit the footage. But if each camera also has its own SD card for local storage, wouldn't that act as a backup? If someone compromises the central system, can they still affect data on the SD card?