Russian Hacked Webcam Website Creator Refuses to Apologise as Site is Shut Down

The creator of a website which streamed live video from thousands of private video cameras, including webcams and baby monitors, has shut the site down but has not apologised for his actions.

In the first interview since the Information Commissioners Office (ICO) warned consumers about the Russian website showing live video footage, the creator of the website has refused to apologise:

"I do not [have regrets]," he told the Huffington Post. "I did [a] great job to show the problem to neglectful users. Without this example users do not care about the password."

The anonymous programmer shut down the website earlier this week, and posted a cheeky message on the site appealing for some work:

"Programmer looking for a good remote job."

In the interview he reveals he created the website in his spare time and that the idea for it came to him a few years ago. At the height of its popularity, the thousands of streams on the Insecam website were being watched by up to 4,000 people.

"About 3,000–4,000 online users. After that the server lay down and did not accepted users at all," he said.

Warning

Last week the ICO warned about using internet connected cameras without securing them properly, such as CCTV cameras, those integrated into baby monitors, and webcams.

The Insecam website had 584 live streams from the UK (though some only showed a static image) and globally the figure was over 5,000 from 255 different countries.

Taking advantage of the fact that many of these cameras come with default login and passwords set by the manufacturers, the creator of the Insecam website simply scoured the net for such devices and tested to see if the default login details had been changed.

The website creator - who had two of his own cameras streaming on the site - seems to have little sympathy for those affected by having their private cameras used:

"Do you think their privacy is not invaded without my site? There are tons of video records and images on anonymous image boards. I am not even sure that all of them are not an exhibitionists."