Camera Jamming

[Raider519]

Hey all, tried to search for anything related to jamming, and this is why I created this thread.

My neighbor had his pickup stolen over night. Both my vehicle dash camera, and Hikvision poe camera received service interruption during the incident. I've heard of Ring having an interface option (Enable "Protected Management Frames" or "Management Frame Protection) to counter this jamming. The Blue Iris clip freezes midway during the theft, and then restarts normal recording as the thieves drove away. Is there any option to enable any protection, or will you update your software to include a protection option to counter jamming, or interference?

[Thixotropic]

I don't think this is specifically a camera issue, the issue would be the same with any wifi camera. It's not that hard to jam a wifi signal, unfortunately.

The "Protected Management Frames" setting would be in your router (if it has such a setting, not all do). If your router does have this, it might be worth turning it on.

Without a doubt, hard wired/PoE is the best way to go for a security system.

In short, I don't think there's any way BI could counter jamming; it has no control of the wifi signal or any method to compensate for it. (??)

[Matts1984]

Unfortunately I completely agree with Thixotropic (no offense... I guess it could be fortunate depending on perspective?). The jamming/blocking/disruption is down to an overload of the wifi signal. Management Frame Protection is not widely supported, and has to be by both the AP and the endpoint, but it does help protect against spoofed transmissions. It does not prevent against broken connections or boost the reliability/likelihood of receiving a connection. With the most secure possible wireless network with "Ultra" level encryption, one only needs overpower the frequency to bring it down (not as easy as this sentence indicates BUT also not that hard).

A wired connection is the most reliable plain and simple, with PoE. That gives a single line to your camera that would require physical tampering of a cable that is likely buried or within a structure. The PoE gives the ability to also have battery backup to protect against power issues. That said, for some - running a cable may not be as easy.

[Raider519]

The Hikvision is connected by cat 6. and powered through a poe switch.

[rhosch]

He did say one camera was a PoE wired Hikvision.

How might that have been interrupted?

[Matts1984]

Then there is something else going on OR they used some military grade EMP/wave generator but if the camera worked afterwards - thats even less likely than it already is. There's not really anything to jam with an optical camera (it's just light) and then a contained direct electrical connection via CAT6 which has it's own degree of noise reduction. Really the only practical way to 'jam' a hardwired camera is to blur/distort the image with either a laser beam type device or a paintball to just cover the lense.

And sorry, I had missed where you said you had a Hikvision POE camera in the first message. Obviously thats not wifi

[Thixotropic]

Then there is something else going on OR they used some military grade EMP/wave generator

I misread it too.

But yes, to swamp a hard-wired network camera you'd have to be using some serious jamming equipment, the kind that's usually towed behind a truck.

There's something else going on. For a wired cam and a dash cam to both be blanked out...I don't know how you'd do that with consumer-grade gear.

[TimG]

The Hikvision is connected by cat 6. and powered through a poe switch.

This is concerning. Did BI5 show anything in the log about this ? Do you have any other cameras on this system ? Did they show any errors ?

I haven't heard of this happening before