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"DDoS attacks are also becoming more common. Brian Krebs, an independent security researcher, observed earlier this month that the "source code" to the Mirai botnet had been released by a hacker group, "virtually guaranteeing that the internet will soon be flooded with attacks from many new botnets powered by insecure routers, IP cameras, digital video recorders and other easily hackable devices""

"The significance of the attack on Krebs is that it looks as though many of the attacks on him came from large numbers of enslaved devices - routers, cameras, networked TVs and the like. "Someone has a botnet with capabilities we haven't seen before," says Martin McKeay, Akamai's senior security expert. The DDoS arms race has just moved up a gear."

"re than a thousand British schools are monitoring pupils' online communication for bullying and self-harm using software that analyses and translates slang for teachers. The software uses a constantly updated dictionary which includes words that most adults would not understand. These include acronyms such as "gnoc" (get naked on camera) and "dirl" (die in real life) and words such as Bio-Oil, a commercial product which can be used by children who self-harm to reduce the appearance of scarring."

"Just a reminder for anyone thinking of travelling to Sochi after the Olympics for a spot of tourism: according to Russia's deputy prime-minister, the hotel bathrooms have surveillance cameras that watch you in the shower."

"A smartphone application called Peek, Portable Eye Examination Kit, utilizes the phone's camera and can conduct visual and color field tests, lens imaging for cataracts, and retinal imaging, among other tests to detect sight impairments and diseases."

"While capable of mimicking others, the SociBot's slightly sinister side comes from the fact that it is also watching you. Equipped with two cameras in its head and a depth sensor in its chest, it can detect gestures and movements, as well as judge your emotions by mapping the position of your features over a series of internal templates."

""We don't do facial recognition, we do face detection," Ke Quang, chief operating officer of Quividi, told the Guardian on Monday. "It's software which works from the video feed coming off the camera. It can detect if it's seeing a face, but it never records the image or biomorphological information or traits."

"Many of these cameras have no easy, networked means of getting a firmware update, either, making their zeroday bugs into foreverday bugs. Some of these bugs were simple programmer error, but Philips, ah, Philips: they shipped an Internet-connected home spycam whose default root login was admin and /ADMIN/. Security. "

"That's right, two thirds of the digital image is interpolated by the processor in the conversion from RAW to JPG or TIF. It's reality but not as we know it. For obvious commercial reasons camera manufacturers are careful to reconstruct the digital image in a form that mimics the familiar old photograph and consumers barely noticed a difference in the resulting image, but there are very few limitations on how the RAW data could be handled and reality could be reconstructed in any number of ways."

"An Israeli company is trying to prove that augmented reality is not only the premise of video games, it can also save lives. iOnRoad is a new mobile application, developed by Picitup, that is "helping smartphone users make smarter driving decisions" by using a phone's camera and GPS."

"In his full first interview as surveillance commissioner, Tony Porter - a former senior counter-terrorism officer - said the public was complacent about encroaching surveillance and urged public bodies, including the police, to be more transparent about how they are increasingly using smart cameras to monitor people."

"Microsoft showcased a line of new autonomous robots, called K5, as security guards for one of its campuses. And though the robots looked nothing like Arnold Schwarzenegger, the machine - developed by Knightscope - is impressive and intimidating. Standing 5 feet tall, weighing 300 pounds, and equipped with HD cameras, sensors, alarms, artificial intelligence, and WiFi, it's one incredible piece of technology."

"AI is already here. This isn't some future, theoretical technology we are working on. AI machines are already among us. Take for example Microsoft's recent security robot demonstration. Called the K5, these autonomous machines stand 5 feet tall, weigh 300 pounds, and are equipped with HD cameras, sensors, alarms, Wi-Fi and - you guessed it - artificial intelligence. These machines have been programmed to recognize if something is out of place, like an injured employee or a potential trespasser. And as technology improves, the K5 will become more capable of recognizing even smaller discrepancies than humans can."

"Pearson is apparently monitoring social media, to detect signs of cheating during exams. That's insanely creepy, and a horrible violation. "And for those who think "Well, its Twitter, its public", remember this: So is walking down the street. But is it OK for the government to monitor us with street surveillance cameras and send us fines for not crossing with the crosswalk?" via Pearson Caught Spying On Students. Big Brother Is Here. "

"Shodan is a search engine for the Internet of Things, scanning the public Internet for devices communicating on ports and over protocols that are commonly used by IoT devices. By feeding it the right parameters -- Real Time Streaming Protocol (RTSP, port 554) -- you can find innumerable publicly shared webcams, ranging from CCTVs that oversee marijuana grow-ops and many, many baby-monitors. "

"Researchers at Incapsula have discovered a botnet that runs on compromised CCTV cameras. There are hundreds of millions, if not billions, of these in the field, and like many Internet of Things devices, their security is an afterthought and not fit for purpose. "

"And, of course, there's the law-enforcement angle. Instead of relying on sketch artists and police lineups, a real-life version of a Recaller could tap into a witness's memory and reconstruct what they saw. Forget security-camera footage - cops just need your thoughts."

"Affectiva is running a program that pays drivers to help train its emotion-recognition system. The company sends drivers a kit including cameras and other sensors to place within their vehicles. These record a person's facial expressions, gestures, and tone of voice on the road. That data is then labeled by trained specialists for a range of emotions, and fed into deep neural networks."