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Show HN: Open-source private home security camera system (end-to-end encryption)

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551 points arrdalan | 1 comments | 30 Nov 24 22:13 UTC | HN request time: 0.205s | source

I needed a security camera inside my house, one that would send motion notifications to my smartphone and would allow me to livestream remotely. However, I could not find one that I could trust due to privacy concerns. Many of them upload the plaintext of videos to their servers and none is fully open-source as far as I know. Therefore, I decided to use my spare time to build one from scratch. Called Privastead (as in Private Homestead), it uses OpenMLS for end-to-end encryption (between the camera local hub and the smartphone) and is mostly implemented in Rust (except for part of the Android app that is implemented in Kotlin). The system is functional now and I've been using it in my own house for the past couple of weeks.

Based on some of the discussions I've seen online, it seems like there are other users who are also concerned with the privacy implications of home security cameras. Therefore, I decided to open source my solution for everyone to use. If you need a privacy-preserving home security camera, please give it a try and provide feedback. Note that trying out the system requires you to have a supported IP camera, a local machine connected to the IP camera, a server, and an Android smartphone. I have put together detailed instructions on setting up the system, which I hope makes it easier for others to get the system up and running.

In addition, consider contributing to the project. The prototype currently has a lot of limitations: mainly that it has only been tested with one IP camera, only allows the use of one camera, and only supports Android. I'll continue to improve the prototype as time permits, but progress will be much faster if there are other contributors as well.

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nzeid ◴[01 Dec 24 01:21 UTC] No.42285384[source]▶
I'm deeply interested in this and it just so happens I only need one hardened IP camera for my home.

Can you point out how your project provides a better security layout than say, Home Assistant? It does appear that there is little concern for encryption between cameras and local networking hubs, but the assumption seems to be that if the device is over a wire it's isolated to the local network, and if it's Wi-Fi it's subject to WPA. So there isn't much desire for additional encryption in that context.

Otherwise, Home Assistant's server/portal is more than capable of encryption beyond the camera's network interface.

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arrdalan ◴[01 Dec 24 04:41 UTC] No.42286239[source]▶
If you use Home Assistant in an isolated local network with no Internet access, you will have good privacy. However, I needed to be able to use my camera remotely from my phone. That's when using strong end-to-end encryption becomes critical.

Home Assistant seems to provide two options for remote access: https://www.home-assistant.io/docs/configuration/securing/

One option is to expose your instance to the Internet and using TLS/SSL to connect to it remotely. To me, that's risky since any machine exposed to the Internet is going to see more attack attempts and is harder to secure. The second option is to use their cloud. Here, they explain how remote access through their cloud works: https://www.nabucasa.com/config/remote/#security

They also mention its weaknesses:

"Before we talk about weaknesses, know that we will never abuse any weakness unless forced by a government entity. Our approach has one single weakness that is unavoidable: since we own the domain that hosts the remote connection, we are able to issue our own certificate and man-in-the-middle attack (MITM) remote connections. This would allow us to see all data passing through, including authentication tokens."

Privastead's use of MLS provides strong end-to-end encryption. And Privastead is not vulnerable to MITM attacks due to its secure pairing solution. I plan to write more about the security of Privastead including its pairing solution.

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hathawsh ◴[01 Dec 24 04:52 UTC] No.42286281[source]▶
A third option is to set up a Wireguard service and expose the web UI only through the VPN. I use the Wireguard app to connect my phone to my VPN. This solution seems very safe to me. Are there risks I'm not thinking of?
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1. arrdalan ◴[01 Dec 24 06:13 UTC] No.42286589[source]▶
That's definitely better, if done right. I still prefer to avoid port forwarding on my router if possible. The fewer attack surfaces I have to worry about, the better.