Amcrest Forum

My firewall indicates the IPM-721 is wanting to connect to a few addresses possibly managed by Amazon on ports 8800 and 12366. Assuming this is a cloud storage service... Any way to turn that off on the device?

https://amcrest.com/forum/unknown-suspi ... t1030.html

Yea, I also discovered my ip2m841 is connecting to an ec2 instance at ec2-52-23-183-188.compute-1.amazonaws.com over port 8802 via UDP.

Don't know what they are collecting and beaconing out, but this company practice is shady...
it is not documented anywhere.

I'll be shutting DNS off on my cameras tonight.

Amcrest...you need to address and explain what this is about. I have cameras in my kids' rooms, and I'm sure a lot of other customers do, too.

Hello all,

The camera connects to Amazon cloud to check for automatic firmware update. This was implemented keeping in mind hassle free firmware update of the Ip camera. I believe this is the specific server the camera is trying to connect to. It also syncs with the P2P server for easy remote access.

Melvin wrote:Hello all,

The camera connects to Amazon cloud to check for automatic firmware update. This was implemented keeping in mind hassle free firmware update of the Ip camera. I believe this is the specific server the camera is trying to connect to. It also syncs with the P2P server for easy remote access.

So, the question is, how do I disable this?
I do NOT want the camera to have or attempt to access internet at all. Where I can disable these attempts?

Thanks!

Zero out the DNS servers on your cameras.

Yea, I'd prefer to have the option to disable 'automatic updates'. Hopefully it could be a "Feature" in a future release.

This is still going on.

Just disable 'P2P' under Network/TCP/IP... selecting the P2P tab at the top of that section. That will eliminate the traffic concerning you. However, to then connect to your camera(s) from the Internet you will have to open your own inbound ports to the camera(s) and configure your own network security. I use IPSec VPN to reach my cameras.

Amcrest obviously realizes that the great majority of users are not 'up to' this challenge. So, they use their so-called P2P system. The camera makes it's own *outbound* connection to an Amcrest server (p2p.amcrestview.com). The default on the typical consumer firewall... e.g. Windows Firewall, usually in combo with your home wireless router... is to allow devices within the protected network to make such an outbound connection.

Understand: firewalls only control connection initiation(i.e. what can open a connection to what). After the allowed connection is established, data can flow in either direction. So, having established a connection to p2p.amcrestview.com, your camera will also accept data from that server... such as PTZ commands. A full network conversation can ensue. Video out, commands in, etc.

When you connect to your camera(s) in this way, your viewing app is really connecting to the Amcrest server and requesting a conversation with a uniquely identified device. That's what scanning the QR code is all about... making the app aware of your specific camera's identity. The Amcrest server is already aware of your camera's unique identity because the camera communicated that to the server when it established that outbound connection from your house (or wherever your cam is). So, the Amcrest server knows how to broker a connection between your client app and your camera.

The config will not let you 0 out the DNS or gateway address. I set the DNS and gateway addresses to the static address of the camera and that works. I definitely would not want auto update and if that's happening users should be asked whether or not they want this. I don't want any updating of these cameras once installed. Don't fix what ain't broke and updating can only break something.