> Hmm. Probably originally implemented to enable Kremlin surveillance of Russians (in Russia), but there was no reason to remove the surveillance back door for the export version/

The Kremlin would just get the installers to give them the direct access. No need with getting special complex software features written. Also, historically their crypto stuff has not been bad and has been paranoid so this is unlikely to be official. This is either done by private people associated with the company or, more likely, done by Russia with the speculative hope that they get installed somewhere interesting abroad. Likely there are hundreds of these cameras in countries all over the world and if t

Nonsense. This backdoor was obviously put into place so Russian tanks could disable the cameras and speed through the cities, traversing Slovakia quickly on their way to the west. But, now that it's been discovered, those tanks will need to obey the traffic laws - foiling any invasion!

> Hmm. Probably originally implemented to enable Kremlin surveillance of Russians (in Russia), but there was no reason to remove the surveillance back door for the export version/

That I very much doubt, these were probably prepared for export. I can think of a few questions here:

- some Slovakian political parties are pro Russian, what was their role in this debacle?

- what is the background for the Cypriot "shell company" involved?

- what numbers are they using for the SMS messages? Specifically, the country code.

- the SMS-activated Russian backdoors depend on which network? G2, G3, G4 or even G5?

If your last line of defense against state-sponsored spying is IP-based filtering, you are pwned. Especially with an SMS-based backdoor.

> Would a properly installed firewall stop someone from accessing this via the IP?

The short answer is yes, but the longer answer is it's complicated.

Devices with back doors may also dial out from your network. It's common for devices to phone home to check for updates and such so such activity is not necessarily even seen as suspicious, though of course in an enterprise context you should be disabling automatic updates and/or reconfiguring them to use internal servers.

Devices which might be malicious should be segregated onto their own physically isolated networks connected only through

For an SMS based backdoor, no. It seems these devices are designed to use cellular connections (which makes sense since traffic cameras will be installed in remote locations).

And then most firewalls focus on inbound connections, but often do nothing to prevent a compromised device from making outbound connections. SMS could easily be used to initiate an outbound connection.

Given the vast numbers killed on the roads in the West, especially in the USA, and the clear evidence that slower cars do less damage in accidents, there is a good case for installing them aggressively. Near where I live a freeway comes to a sudden pedestrian crossing as it enters the suburbs of my city - and enforcing slower speeds in the approach to that crossing is clearly worthwhile. By contrast there is sometimes a camera on the way OUT of the city, beyond the crossing - where there is no further stops - and that makes no sense.

Here is a teardown [1]https://www.cehrp.org/dissecti... [cehrp.org]

[1] https://www.cehrp.org/dissection-of-flock-safety-camera/

> Turning the western countries into surveillance states, and now they find someoe else can piggy-back on that. ROFL.

Yes, there is a kind of poetic justice here. Just another example of how any state sponsored surveillance can be co-opted by bad actors. In this case it just came pre-installed.