WiFi jamming of Camera's in the news again

Seems that WiFi and Cellular jamming is being used more for burglary these days.

They are extremely easy to get even though illegal.

I did some testing in a lab with a Flipper w/WiFi and Wyze somewhat could handle jamming short term but eventually stopped recording to SD card after 12+ hours of jamming.

The only way I could knock out the Wyze cam QUICKLY was if power was lost to camera during WiFi signal jamming event and then power restored while WiFi jamming is still occurring.

The camera will not record to SD without initial Internet connection this is a known fact with Wyze cams.

Other cams like the ones in the video and others go offline immediately upon jamming and return after WiFi restoral.
WiFi Jamming security cams <— link to newscast

At least with Wyze it takes a little more effort to knock them out with a WiFi jammer

Some of my non-Wyze cams are on P.O.E. wired connections but not all, as WiFi is convenient in some cases.

Thieves Evolve and So Must We :upside_down_face:

1 Like

The flipper isn’t quite up to the task, the ones the theives are using dump much higher powered RF.

I suspect after that 12 hours you’d find the recordings on the SD card but have to put it in a computer, or find out the date of the firmware build and look at that date in the app, it just wasn’t able to update its time and so starts recording to a rogue directory with the firmware build’s date and time. That’s my theory anyway, same thing that happens when these cams lose internet for 30 mins or so.

1 Like

Yep, the Flipper is weak, but it was just a lab test too see what is possible.

Of course the thieves will use a high powered WiFi and Cellular jammer.

I did check the entire SD card and there was not any recording at that time or any other and no other folders or files on V3 and V3 pans that the tests were performed on.

I think we were jammed a few weeks ago.

Front of house has 3 cameras with overlapping FOV. When someone pulls into the driveway I can follow them from the driveway to the front yard to the doorbell where I am notified if there is a person/package. Each camera reliably notifies me of the events.

The reason I think we were jammed is my wife came home from work (all notifications worked) and asked what all the packages were on the front porch. I asked “what packages”.

There were 3 packages on front porch. Not one of my cameras gave me a notification. Now I was curious. All my cams have SD cards. I went through each cam SD card and on all 3 saw a delivery car pull up, person walk up to front porch and leave the packages. Of note there were no breaks in the SD timeline.

Of interest was the condition of how the packages were delivered. We’re used to Amazon, Doordash, FedEx, UPS and USPS. Each of these have a professional appearance and typically drive a branded vehicle. In this case one of our kids sent us some items from a non-standard delivery service. The delivery car was an older American car and the delivery person was in t-shirt and jeans. Hmmm. Nothing against people that work for a living but I think he jammed us. Maybe he didn’t want to be identified.

I appreciate @bryonhu test as it sounds as if the wyze cams recover quickly.

None of this would have been possible without the SD cards. I would be running around the front yard trying to fool my cameras (your welcome Samsung and Sandisk).

1 Like

Given your description, I’m curious about your settings and whether or not you saw event tagging when you reviewed the video. (Since you reported notifications of your wife’s arrival home, I imagine the settings are all good.) I’d look in at least four places for the cameras in question:

  1. Event tag icons in the microSD recording timeline.
  2. RECENT EVENTS section on the camera’s Live Stream screen.
  3. Events tab.
  4. Monitoring tab’s Multi-Camera Timeline View.

I’ve just recently (within the past couple of days or so, primarily since switching to the latest β app release) begun using the Multi-Camera Timeline View as a way to quickly scroll and review events, and I really dig it. For instance, I have a couple of Cam v4s, a Cam OG Telephoto, and a Video Doorbell v2 all facing outward from the front of my house and all in a group, and using the Monitoring tab I can quickly go back in time to see when the USPS truck passed.

I don’t know what the technical process is for marking events on a camera’s timeline, so I don’t know if the delivery you described would be evident by looking for those markers. I guess I’m just thinking out loud that the answer might be evidence for or against a jamming hypothesis, but I really don’t know. I’m curious. :thinking:

I had a few notifications not come through yesterday but my cams were reporting several days of uptime on my wifi, I think Wyze’s servers are getting overloaded.

The delivery people around here could care less what they look like and are happy to throw your package from the sidewalk. But if he does have a jammer running all day, some day he’ll have a nice tumor to have removed.

Yeah, that’s what I’m thinking is more likely: some kind of notification hiccup on their servers. That’s why I wondered about event tagging, but I haven’t done significant testing/investigation to figure out if the timeline gets marked even if notifications fail. :man_shrugging:

In my case they do (well, except on the OGs since it has issues with that right now, but they are in the events list). Both yesterday and when there was a longer outage a few weeks ago.

1 Like

Yeah, that’s why I suggested checking several places in the app. Thanks for confirming my thought! :+1:

Yeah the flipper will not give you much of an assessment of how well the Wyze will perform. Up the power like the criminals are using and bet you won’t have much luck.

This was a few weeks ago. There were no event icons for that time period. That would be the first thing I would look for. I used the old method of scrolling the time line until I see the packages, then backing off until they disappear. It took a few tries until I narrowed it down to the delivery. Then I knew what time it occurred and finding it on the other 2 cams was trivial.

I suppose I could have had an internet burp, AWS could have burped, but seeing that I’m home 24/7 and on the internet way to much I would have noticed.

Edit: I checked the first 3 at the time this occurred.

1 Like

I’m also missing a few cloud events, that were recorded on SD. The servers might be busy but I suspect someone is testing new code on the servers.

This seems entirely plausible.

1 Like

Hopefully they do not test code over Christmas :christmas_tree:.

If they don’t, then…

Cosmo Kramer:  “It's a Festivus miracle!”
:grin:

1 Like

Note that different model cams respond to loss of Wi-Fi differently at the moment. Some will record indefinitely with the correct time when jammed.

I actually have a wired intrusion detection system setup now that also runs through Home Assistant. If certain devices suddenly go offline, I can get local offline alerts about it. If several go offline unexpectedly I can trigger various kinds of routines, including alarms or sirens.

Note there are different kinds of jamming. Burglars currently are more often using deauth rather than true jamming and that’s fairly easy to overcome now, particularly with the Wyze cams using Wi-Fi 6 and WPA3 which isn’t susceptible to deauth attacks anyway.

Honestly, jamming isn’t really as easy or effective as most people fear. There are significant size, power and distance constraints, particularly if the criminal isn’t a friend/family who knows yours whole setup already so they need to jam everything.

Handheld jammers are too low power and low range to be really effective in covering jamming the entire Wi-Fi spectrum sufficiently to knock out a whole house in a typical suburban neighborhood. Though they could target a specific area of the property, other cameras on the property might record what’s going on. Also, give your neighbors a camera for Christmas. They can’t knock everyone out. Low power jammers can be powered by a car cigarette lighter, but they are again limited in their coverage.

Hmm, that’s not been my experience. I have purposely left Wyze cameras without Internet for much longer and had it keep recording. I tested this for somebody who wanted to put one in a distant Warehouse that would only have hotspot access. They wanted to make sure it would keep recording to the SD card even if it didn’t have internet except when they set it up and when they turn the hotspot back on to check it occasionally, sometimes not for months. It may depend on the model though. Sometimes firmware updates also change things over time. I haven’t noticed any that didn’t at least record under a different date and time stamp when they lose Internet for a long time. But it’s possible some might. However, you will never have to worry about 12 hours of jamming on the same camera. So even 12 hours is sufficient. Portable Jammers can’t last that long on battery. And portable ones have a small range That as somebody moves around the house, it’s likely to re-enable some of the cameras intermittently, or not cover them all. So even if some do cut off at 12 hours, that is more than enough time to keep recording. I would call that good news. :+1:

The high powered jammer models that cover a wide enough range to be sure to jam every spectrum actually won’t work in a cars cigarette lighter since they use too much power. They also are not easily accessible like some of the low power portable ones.

These constraints make jamming fairly ineffective for the typical burglar. Most of the ones smart enough and rich enough to afford or create the right jammer and power source and such have better ways to get money than petty larceny at your house if you’re a stranger. If someone is using a high powered jammer against you, they almost definitely know who you are. They’re targeting you specifically. They’ve thoroughly planned this. No PoE camera is likely to make much difference because they’ll already know about that too and will likely target the routers/switches/Nas and everything else upon initial fast breach after they’ve already cut the cable/telephone/fiber wires and jammed satellite too to make sure no outside communication gets out before they get to the evidence first. If someone who knows you that well wants to get in undetected before they get out, there’s pretty much nothing you can do unless you are rich and have an on-guard small militia guarding your really large perimeter at all times and have a secret underground panic room bunker that would require something bigger than nukes to get to you.

I’m just saying, jammers are a legit, Moderate concern, but they’re kind of overrated for the average person’s concerns IMO since the portable ones have such limitations, and the high power ones are not easily mobile or affordable, especially to anybody desperate enough with low impulse control who are usually doing a burglary which is mostly impulsive & drug fueled. Most addicts will sell the jammer for some spare cash. :joy: Bigger dealers wouldn’t bother.

Most burglaries are already family, friends, acquaintances or nearby neighbors. Then there is crime of opportunity. Most of the above her way more likely to use deauth or If they are using a portable jammer it will still be during a quick snatch and run, which a Wyze Cam would still record to SD card. I, personally, would also get an alert that I’ve been jammed and Wyze devices went offline. I could even trigger alarms while jammed. But almost NOTHING can be done for someone talented specifically targeting you though. Not even PoE., etc.

Having said that, I’m pretty shocked that wyze hasn’t come out with a pro model that includes PoE natively (And preferably rtsp as well). I personally think they should have a model with that as an option. It doesn’t have to be their flagship model or anything. But they should have one. They seriously just need to make an all-in-one cam that has most of the features everybody’s been begging them to do for years. Even if it’s more expensive. They need at least one. I’m guessing they won’t even consider something like that until the matter camera libraries are out though. So, we’re unlikely to see anything like this until 2026 at the earliest in my opinion. Still, it would be nice.

4 Likes