Can Wireshark Spot Hidden Cameras For Free? 

A lot of security cameras in the field nowadays are PoE on an air-gapped network or a separate VLAN - possibly with MAC filtering, as well. ...But the video has a point that the poorly installed cameras (on the same wifi / unencrypted / analog) will be detectable as described.

For more than a decade I’ve used wireshark to locate ip cameras. The first rental I had suspicions about found three.

Now I need a Master Class in WireShark.

Would be nice to include the settings you used to do this. for people getting into this stuff, this is practically unusable except to know that it's possible. Since the video is already done, maybe a link in the description?

They can be detected with a transistor radio tuned to 1000 AM. Most radio transmitters use 1000 KHz oscillator circuits. You may not be able to intercept signals, but you can tell if they are active.

You can also turn the lights off and look for infrared lights that many cameras have with your phone.

The look you give at (5:19mins), is priceless!

Wow, finding a hidden camera via Wireshark is definitely a brilliant idea, the only issue here is in the hotel you are connected to a shared internet with others, would be almost soo impossible to find the suspicious one, but still I never thought that would be possible ,

I appreciate your high value clear and concise educational content.

when using IR finders, turn the lights off so IR is activated if it has a day/night sensor. No IR in daylight on those type cameras. I have an older cheap Point and shoot digital camera converted to IR that I use for that and for verifying remotes work. It was $50 many years ago.

''Shut The the f$*k dad I'm playing Minecraft craft" is the best quote of the video

the fact that even the cheap cameras are starting to use anti glare and non reflective lenses pretty much renders any attempt to find reflections useless

Damn bro, this makes me nostalgic of the old days of yt, very nice 👍

i would love to see more videos on awesome wireshark filter techniques for things.

This is surprisingly one of the most important videos on the internet

Next up: Get a room upgrade by hiding a cheap wireless camera in your hotel room.

Wireshark is a very resourceful tool! The vlog was very informative!

Love the content...but please, do something about bringing your audio levels up! I have to really crank my amplifier to hear people speaking in this video! Thanx.

Very good video👍 Just for the Q&A Stream from Kody and Alex: Is it possible to start a Denial of Service attack against WiFi Router with Association requests? You send a request to the router to get a Association Identifier (AID). If you do this multiple times with multiple spoofed MAC addresses, will the WiFi router get a DoS? Many greetings from germany btw.

If I found one the first thing I would do is call the police right after blocking the lens. This way if appropriate the proper forensics could be done, without breaking the chain of custody.

I think, the long bendy antenna is for finding the magnets of gps trackers.. It's recommended when using those to turn off every know radio freq device in the area, and preferably turn off the lights.. Wireshark method might be more efficient for certain situations lol.

Mannnnnn this is awesome content!!!

The intro was lit🔥

My property has lots of cameras, mostly because i get lots of wildlife and also because i love playing with vision analytics and ai built into some. Also have some Arecont Vision pano cameras and a Sony PTZ on the roof. Only a small number are actually wireless (Sercomm iCamera-1000) which are great little devices but if I was serious about hiding cameras, they'd probably be those $15 PoE powered ones from China that use industry-standard ONVIF. None of this silly cloud nonsense. Pro-Tip: Easy to get 24/48-port gigabit PoE managed switches next to free. Aruba 650 is a great small switch with 4 PoE powered ports but PoE required a paid license. After HP bought the company, they released firmware that enables PoE. Great for powering cameras.

I love that you use thinkpads- I also have a bunch of T430s’s (and a few T460’s, omg…) they are solid, cheap and powerful enough to handle LOTS of technical wizardry. A great platform for a budding youtube channel.

thanks for this. But the actual wireshark set up lasted a few seconds. I would say it's more beneficial to show more analytically the actual set up

I'm wondering if software defined radio might be better, I doubt it set off by quite as many false positives. But you can get a whole bunch of different ranges of bandwidths. If for instance someone had a 800 MHz 900 MHz 50 MHz or dect 6.0 camera it may be the one real choice.

using a SDR can show the most radio trasmitting devices, not only wifi

I have a plugin someone made for 'wireshark' that scans for known network camera systems and can show any unshielded feeds if logged in the same network.

That was awesome. Is it possible to run Wireshark from an Android device? Maybe using termux or anlinux? Does Wireshark use TCP dump under the hood? I wonder how hard it would be to create an app specifically for filtering and locating radio devices. Also, do your methods presume the security camera is on the same Wi-Fi network?

Great content love u guys quick question what laptop do u personally use thanks

Interesting. I was anticipating using Wireshark to filter for RTSP packets, although that wouldn't tell you the WHERE, just the IT EXISTS.

When I was little kid, there was a 20/20 episode about a woman whose neighbor installed a video-camera in her master bathroom linked to a VCR he installed in her attic. She had some sort of electrical problem or something that needed done, but it was her lucky day because her nieghbor was happy to help her and do all the work for FREE. So she invited him in and allowed him to work. Eventually she found what he had done up there and called the police who dutifully arrested this terrible neighbor for his criminal deeds. Clearly a crime was committed, but it was up to prosecutors to find the appropiate legal means to prosecute the man because the state in which this occurred filming naked woman in her shower was not a crime, regardless of consent. And the woman had invited the man in so he wasn't breaking & entering (at least not at 1st glance). The Prosecutors charged him with Theft for the electricity he was stealing from her to power the VCR. Then charged him with Burglary of her household because once they had the crime of theft occur in her attic, they worked back to Burglary arguing that her consent was the result of his fraudulent representation to conceal his true intent of entering her household in order to commit a crime (theft of her electricity). Yes, it would not apply to this video's creepy-surveillance scenario, but inevitably there will occur future creepy-surveillance scenarios where the same or similar logical process might prove usefully applicable in prosecution.

Thanks! Very helpfully!

A buddy of mine thought he was being spied on and was able to use his PVS-14 to at least eliminate the possibility of an IR camera, and used the IR illuminator on the device to look for lenses.

Low hoodie count and a nice vid - thanks :-)

But the wireshark approach only works if your laptop AND all cameras are connected to the same router, no?

Very interesting video. Thanks.

Cool i always had this thought experiment if that would be possible, cool you did it.

Great video 😄

Big fan of yours INDIA 🇮🇳. The way you present things just amazing and would love to see you especially in upcoming videos. Good Luck 👍

Love thuse. Being a road warrior ive been in some questionabke hotels. Thanks!

Wouldn't it be better to use a usb directional antenna? I could use kismet to do the same and log everything to a database with a gps receiver.

That's true, especially dirty electricity could do that, it seems.

GOLD CONTENT thank you

So whats this about the infrared on the phone? Great episode.

Good idea. Does someone have a list on github or something w/ a list of all the wireless camera mfg. mac IDs?

I believe wireshark and cam should be connected on same SSID to achieve this. What if cam connected on different SSID other than user connected?

I have to inform you though in Australia authorities ignore privacy complaints. There is no privacy in Australia we are leaning towards more Hong Kong ideas.

Great work but would be more helpful if you included a less biased review of the k18. Been curious what knowledgeable people think of those types of devices but everyone intelligent with experience makes videos that exaggerate the shortcomings of the devices they don’t sell/promote. If you could give us an expert opinion on exactly why the device is not a good value we’d appreciate it (we meaning laymen). Thanks again for the well produced video though.

Complimentary Metal Oxide Semiconductor, CMOS, are one inch by one inch circuit boards with a lens on them and wires intended to connect to 12 volts and any circuitry to descramble the output to make a reasonable picture. Some lens are conical with an eighth of an inch aperture that will interface with an eighth of an inch hole in a shade, wall, metal or anything that allows drilling a hole 1/8" in diameter. ALL CMOS cameras run very hot and can burn your fingers. They need ventilation. But they have a very long life and are very reliable. Any laser thermometer can detect the heat of a CMOS camera. Or infra red detector.

This video is worth it for the skit alone! Nice content as always

I love the intro 😄

awesome video, wireshark is godly

I like the theater in this video. very funny and informative at the same time.

A friend of mine thinks his house has been bugged by a scam artist. As this guy is too knowledgeable on certain subjects spoken about in private. If I scan using wireshark (im a noob) which signal indicators am I looking for please?

What if the camera is on a different vlan from the one you are on?

Wireshark isn't what you would call a packet capture software I mean it does splay out the ins and outs but it causes a lot of noise you have to sort through. I have my own purpose build capture that will even work on dos or unix shells and it auto sorts the kinds of coms via packet type.

I love this new guy. He is also very funny. I need this type of funny video also. Please Nullbyte.

LMAOOO the beginning was hilarious.

Thank you!

Any chance you can show how to write the filter? Something Darren would have shown.

It's easier to look at the network with "arp-scan -l" in the Linux commend line (Windows has the same command, but I don't remember the syntax), and my security cameras show up as follows, which also includes the local IP address: Shenzhen Baichuan Digital Technology Co., Ltd. Your mileage would more than likely be different, but it would be clear it isn't your computer, since they would have a different name more noticeable. Also all the cameras might have the same name, if they are from the same company, which would be a big red flag. You can also check your own IP address with ipconfig or ifconfig, which means you can identify your own computers eliminating them as suspect. The computer you do the scan from might not show up in the scan, which is normal. You might have to install arp-scan, but doing the command for the first time will tell you how to do it. It is already in Windows CMD. I think this is much easier than using WireShark, and within the scope of most people. 3:46 I've never used one of those devices, but my understanding is he is too close and it works in a dark room much better. They typically claim you can stand in the middle of the room to detect cameras, but you might want to move around a bit.

What OS do you run on your t430 and also do you run a custom ROM on the pixel phone ?

Wifiman app by Ubiquiti can do all that as well with an easier interface.

Could you provide a list or url to the Mac addresses for these commonly found cameras in the description? Thanks!

Can you guys write a full article on this?

Do I have to use wire shark with a laptop or can I use it with my phone?

I just set up a timed emf generator then leave the area and come back later. Make sure to bring the tv cable box with you.😎

What if they have a separate network for the cameras?

Any other common IoT interfaces support? zigbee? bluetooth? z-wave?

I couldn't find anything with that camera detector. Even looking directly at the camera i couldn't find it. :)

Dosent stop sd recording devices.

Good video by the way.

Is a lenovo t480 good for crafking passowrds and using wireshark?

I’m confused, he had to enter the MAC address of the hidden camera before he could try to find its signal? What’s the point then?

My guess is that you use light in the dark, so that you can easier see the reflection

But with Wireshark you need to be in the same network. Right? You can change the mode of the spy device to search magnetic filds too. And maybe it is easyer to use airmon-ng and list all clients in a network to see if maybe there WLAN cameras in the network. Or around you. If you are lucky maybe you can see on the Mac Adress that a camera is in your or a network you don't have access too. Maybe you know some hackers who can explain this to you. Have a nice weekend!

if you're staying in a place like a hotel, where a guest wifi is typical, wouldn't the guest wifi not be the same network as likely the cameras, and therefore not show up on wireshark??

How about devices connect to cellular or devices not on the same wifi network with hidden ssid or sd card recording?

Detector would work a lot better if you killed the main breaker first, with the exception of AirBNBs you're unlikely to encounter anything hardwired

Not nearly as well as a oculus quest 2 on setup/pass through mode. (Go ahead put your AirPods on top of your phone screen and give it a little look) whoa right ?

Does the computer need to be the same wifi Network as the cameras?

so, if someone put a spy camera on my house, they should have an access to my wifi first?.... or if not how can we detect? does this method works to detect?

7:07 “To find the hidden camera we can scan nearby wireless traffic for devices with MAC addresses belonging to camera manufacturers, like the Sony camera here“ This is kind of a critical part of this video but no other information is given on how to get a list of MAC addresses belonging to camera manufacturers. Can you put a link to such a list please?

So what you have to know the brand of camera in order to use Wireshark properly

I found a camera in my house. I installed it though. To defeat that red glow put fine mesh black pantyhose over the lens. Red reflection gone and camera won't even see the pantyhose. You are welcome.

I'm so boring I'd cause the voyeur emotional damage. I don't have a computer either. (see above) I do appreciate and respect helping people that aren't boring and find tech of today interesting. In my experience with lots of time living in motels and hotels for work reasons it's almost always them so I'd go straight to the authorities and let them deal with staff.

It was not clear to me if this only works if you already have access to the wireless/vlan network you are looking for devices on. Or are you detecting the wireless signals of any nearby device just based off the fact they are emitting signal?

does anyone have a pre-compiled list of wifi camera MAC prefixes? Im not able to go digging for the information my self ATM, and Im sure there are ones I would miss. Has anyone already done the leg work?

The toilet cam! Literally lol.

instead of over complicating things with wireshark, can t you just use a simple wi fi scanner to see if there are unknown connected devices on that network?

The date on the camera at 0:50 says 21/69/420 😂

First! Love your content.

So, how do I set this up in wireshark?? Turn on some filters and wave my hands?

“It’s a router idiot” 😂

I know there is a camera in my bedroom somewhere because I over heard my sister in law mention it to a friend who had come to visit her. She didn't realize that the wall between our rooms has no insulation. Its just two sheets of drywall and a 2x4 every 32 inches and its turned sideways giving even less of a surface to block sound waves. Is it illegal for her to film me while I am in my private bedroom where I change and have sex by myself but still its wrong to be a peeping tammy..

What if a camera is communicating via gprs shield using cell network? Or if its a regular bug that transmits only when it hears something? If a pro stalker/ law enforcement doesn’t want you to find surveillance devices, chances are you won’t.

Flashlight from phone to look for a reflection

you know how to have fun. !