Is Your Home Webcam Broadcasting to the World?

A search engine has been launched that allows users to find live video of anything from poorly secured internet-connected webcams.

This ranges from security camera footage inside shops, offices and homes - to video monitor feeds of sleeping babies and school classrooms.

The search engine is called Shodan, and was launched in 2009 by John Matherly to scan for every internet-connected device and hunt for their vulnerabilities and insecurities.

A new feed available to paying members shows footage from unsecured web cameras.

Webcams often have obvious default passwords or no password at all, meaning they can be viewed by anyone with a web connection.

Shodan crawls the internet at random looking for IP addresses with open ports.

If an open port doesn’t have authentication and streams a video feed, a script picks up that feed and is able to broadcast it online.

It is similar to sites like Insecam - the Russian voyeur site which collated web camera feeds in 2014.

However Shodan says its explicit aim is to show how weak security is, despite repeated warnings about securing internet-connected devices with strong passwords.

Security expert Dan Tentler told Ars Technica UK that vulnerable devices were “all over the place”.

The solution is simple - change the basic factory-set default security codes to someone only you know.