Latest firmware update for Amcrest cameras results in constant connection to cloud servers even for non-cloud customers

[vegas50000]

I'm from Amcrest Cloud support. Sorry for all the back and forth. We've finally come to understand the situation. Thanks for all the feedback via email and your blog post (great analysis btw). A couple of points:

1 - All the traffic from camera -> cloud is expected and standard for this kind of device and matches what would be in our server logs, including pings to the cloud servers, certificate exchange/setup, etc.

2 - The problem you've identified is that the outbound communication is supposed to stop after 2 hours if a user has not attached their camera to a cloud account. We have finally reproduced this problem internally and you're right, there is an issue in the firmware.

We are working with the firmware team to ensure this traffic is halted after 2 hours, as intended. I'm currently testing a release that fixes this, so it shouldn't be long before the new firmware is released.

Once again, thanks for taking the time to dig into our product at this level of detail.

Regards,
Alen

[jamestx10]

What about the plug in? Are they working on that yet? Browser workarounds will only last so long.

[ragnarok]

weird i deny access to the internet on my camera with ddwrt and its still getting around my access policy and connecting . I have to use my pi hole device to block "config.amcrestcloud.com" and p2p.amcrestview.com

[Jordan77]

Also causes a lot of settings to no longer save. Every reboot (power failure or whatever) causes them to rest to default.

[kvic]

I recently blocked my Amcrest cameras from Internet access on my Asus router. I do not and never have used or configured any Amcrest cloud service. The utility I am using to do this creates a report that it emails to me each week. I was shocked to see how many times these cameras tried to connect to config.amcrestcloud.com.

count for IP, client name: count for domain - percentage
--------------------------------------------------------
116,795 172.16.1.74 Amcrest-Front: 116,632 config.amcrestcloud.com - 99.86% blacklisted
116,684 172.16.1.75 Amcrest-Back: 116,525 config.amcrestcloud.com - 99.86% blacklisted

That is insane! Come on Amcrest ... fix some of these issues in your firmware. Tired of hearing the "we are working on it".

[bw355]

bump..... hopefully, the folks at Amcrest is looking into this issue but i'm not holding my breath.