Best Buy, Home Depot and Lowes Drop Dahua Lorex Oct 25, 2021 - IPVM and TechCrunch reports

[mat200]

Best Buy, Home Depot and Lowes Drop Dahua Lorex
By IPVM Team, Published Oct 25, 2021, 11:02am EDT

Best Buy, Home Depot, and Lowe's dropped Lorex (Dahua) products after IPVM and TechCrunch reached out to the retailers about them selling products from a manufacturer deemed a threat to US national security as well as being sanctioned for human rights abuses.







ref:

Best Buy, Home Depot and Lowes Drop Dahua Lorex

A joint Techcrunch / IPVM investigation results in 3 of the biggest retailers dropping Dahua / Lorex sales. Plus, a Senator and Representative gave comment.

ipvm.com

and

US retail giants pull Chinese surveillance tech from shelves | TechCrunch

Home Depot, Best Buy, and Lowe's removed the Chinese video surveillance makers over links to human rights abuses.

techcrunch.com

 

[john-ipvm]

If I (we/IPVM) can answer any questions on this, let me know.

 

[Teken]

That was a great article to read which doesn’t surprise me in the least. From a totally selfish point of view this means a lot more resources and chips to go around for all of us!

I don’t pretend to know how much security video these companies sell per year. But certainly it will have an impact on components used by a whole hosts of other hardware vendors.

If the net result is more availability that’s fine by me!

Let’s see what happens with the EZVIZ / Hikvision part.

 

[wittaj]

So are companies going to drop Nike and other clothing lines for human rights issues? Is LeBron going to give up his millions in endorsement deals because the gear he is hawking is made by humans living in worse conditions than the very people here he says are being wronged...

@john-ipvm - how about instead of getting these cameras banned, why not educate on what the real issue is and that is keep cameras isolated from the internet? This rabbit hole will only get bigger and where do you draw the line. Some component of almost anything being produced has something from China in it.

That ban is crazy government thinking they are eliminating the potential of hacking by the Chinese government without addressing the real issue.

Hacking vulnerabilities are the same regardless of who makes the cameras...or any IoT for that matter...and that is why most of us here isolate our cameras from the internet...it's just irony that they are surveillance cameras...it flows better saying security cameras are not very secure but many here do not consider them security cameras as they are for surveillance!

And our wonderful government decided to ban Hikvision and Dahua from government installations due to being partly owned by the Chinese government and the potential to be hacked...yet fail to recognize the real problem are the cameras can be breached and then they get exploited with other manufacturer cameras because they failed to isolate them from the internet. End result is people/governments that shouldn't see the camera feeds are now seeing them...

Yep, instead of our government forbidding public agencies from using Chinese brand cameras like Dahua and Hikvision because they could be used to be spied on by the Chinese government, they should have been looking at what the real issue is, and it is this issue that will be same regardless of who makes a camera. You need to get the cameras off the internet period.

We have already seen countless examples where governments facilities that installed expensive AXIS cameras that are built in the US were hacked into...

 

[john-ipvm]

@wittaj Keeping surveillance systems isolated from the Internet is not a practical general option. Any individual may do so but forcing or requiring them to do so undermines the fundamental value proposition of IP video surveillance.

I do fundamentally disagree about "this issue that will be same regardless of who makes a camera" and the critical vulnerabilities with Dahua and Hikvision disclosed last month underscore that.

Btw, the PRC has already blocked out foreign tech products citing cybersecurity risks so what the US is doing here at best matches what the PRC has already done:

 

[TVille]

So what happens to all of the demand for these units? Who else makes cameras of similar quality and price? And, if the come from China, what would be different about them in a couple of months?

 

[sebastiantombs]

And in the mean time the US Government is buying drones, used for security purposes, from China. What could possibly go wrong there? The usual hypocrites hard at work in the swamp is all I see with the whole issue. Nike and the NBA are just two more glaring examples.

 

[john-ipvm]

US Government is buying drones

Related, an FCC Commissioner has called to add DJI to the covered list, see: Carr Calls for Review of DJI, Citing National Security Risks

 

[john-ipvm]

Who else makes cameras of similar quality and price?

I don't think matching the price is possible. However, quality certainly is plus greater security and less dependence on the PRC are valuable to the US and other liberal democracies.

We did a study and found 40+ manufacturer alternatives - 40+ Alternatives to Dahua & Hikvision For Video Surveillance Camera Manufacturing

 

[sebastiantombs]

Nice you have to be a member to read that report. I already get enough junk email so it's a definite no go.

 

[john-ipvm]

Nice you have to be a member to read that report. I already get enough junk email so it's a definite no go.

No one is asking you to subscribe to IPVM and I regularly make subscriber-only test reports available to IPCamTalk members.

 

[TVille]

I don't think matching the price is possible. However, quality certainly is plus greater security and less dependence on the PRC are valuable to the US and other liberal democracies.

We did a study and found 40+ manufacturer alternatives - 40+ Alternatives to Dahua & Hikvision For Video Surveillance Camera Manufacturing

Yeah, looking at the list, the price will be quadruple, or more, current price. Except for Nest, Ring, Arlo, Wyze, and some others, that can't hold a performance candle to the two banned. Basically, the US government is forcing businesses, particularly small businesses, to not upgrade or even maintain video surveillance quality. These are folks who would go to Lowes, Costco, Sams Club, to get NVRs for their small business needs.

 

[john-ipvm]

@TVille for those of you who want lowest price, it's likely you will continue to buy from the PRC, whether through Uniview or other PRC factories or their relabellers (TVT, Sunell, RaySharp, etc.). And if or when such action is finalized, there are various other competitors that would expand from Taiwan or Korea, etc.

 

[Teken]

No one is asking you to subscribe to IPVM and I regularly make subscriber-only test reports available to IPCamTalk members.

Can you provide the same information here without the need to enter a business email alias?!?

 

[wittaj]

@wittaj

I do fundamentally disagree about "this issue that will be same regardless of who makes a camera" and the critical vulnerabilities with Dahua and Hikvision disclosed last month underscore that.

Anything connected to the internet can be hacked. We have no idea which cameras all the factories and facilities were using, but given some of them are public agencies, they were probably some of the more expensive non-banned cameras and possibly even some are one of the 40+ manufacturer alternatives you suggest and yet someone hacked into them...

Better education needs to be done across the board with companies on the pitfalls of allowing cameras to have access to the internet.

Verkada Hacked

(Bloomberg) A group of hackers says they breached a massive trove of security-camera data collected by Silicon Valley startup Verkada Inc., gaining access to live feeds of 150,000 surveillance cameras inside hospitals, companies, police departments, prisons, and schools.

ipcamtalk.com

Does IPVM get any money (ads, subscriptions, free gear, etc.) from the companies that have the most to gain from this ban? Or to be more blunt, is there a money trail that Hik and Dahua didn't play that game and thus IPVM meddling in this with the big box stores is tainted?

Just looking for some full-disclosure if IPVM has monetary motivation for going to the Home Depot's of the world or is this really a best-interest effort for the industry as a whole?

 

[john-ipvm]

Does IPVM get any money (ads, subscriptions, free gear, etc.) from the companies that have the most to gain from this ban? Or to be more blunt, is there a money trail that Hik and Dahua didn't play that game and thus IPVM meddling in this with the big box stores is tainted?

@wittaj Thanks, those are important questions!

We run a clean, independent business. We've never taken any ads, sponsorships, or anything like that. We buy virtually every camera we test and we never accept free gear. Like other publications, various people and companies subscribe to us, including many companies who we regularly criticize.

I am not sure how closely you follow IPVM outside of our Hikua reporting, but IPVM regularly criticizes Western and American companies.

Anything connected to the internet can be hacked

Agreed. Dahua, though, has the worst documented track record [edit, to qualify / clarify this is amongst video surveillance manufacturers.]

 

[wittaj]

@john-ipvm - thanks for clearing that up. I am sure others were thinking that as well.

It will be interesting to see how all of this unfolds.

An unintended consequence of this action though will result in an increase in business to the 3rd party sellers as we see many new members here looking at Lorex as Dahua lite and now the ability to drive over to the store down the street will be taken away from them, so they will now go online and start purchasing Dahua OEM gear, which in turn means any leverage the big box stores had with these companies to try to do better is gone. That hurts the brick-n-mortar companies even more.

At least if the Home Depots wanted to sell Lorex, they could stipulate the requirements to Lorex (something like do not have the cameras phone home by default and require the consumer to knowingly have to acknowledge the risk they take by doing so and instead provide guidance on how to isolate the cameras from the internet) and then let Lorex decide if the effort is worth doing business with them. That option has now been taken away from both parties due to "media" interference (or whatever category IPVM and techcrunch fall into).

 

[fenderman]

I don't think matching the price is possible. However, quality certainly is plus greater security and less dependence on the PRC are valuable to the US and other liberal democracies.

We did a study and found 40+ manufacturer alternatives - 40+ Alternatives to Dahua & Hikvision For Video Surveillance Camera Manufacturing

An those 40 alternatives are likely rife with security vulnerabilities. They are simply not probed as often because they have a significantly smaller footprint. Each and every one of these 40 manufactures cameras must be isolated from the net the same way a dahua or hik cam needs to be. The fact that your user base of installers refuses to or does not have the technical knowhow to do so notwithstanding.

 

[garycrist]

I am not on any side but, who in the hell is not spying on us?

 

[Teken]

I am not on any side but, who in the hell is not spying on us?

Canadians Eh?!?