Nmap used to discover IP camera in AirBnB rental - The Atlantic

[Daniel Miller <bonsaiviking () gmail com>]

In an article in The Atlantic published Tuesday (
https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2019/03/what-happens-when-you-find-cameras-your-airbnb/585007/),
Nmap gets mentioned as the means by which one guest discovered his AirBnB
host was watching him via an undisclosed camera:

Alfie Day told me he found a camera in his rental’s living room while he
> and his girlfriend were visiting his brother in Bulgaria. Day works in IT,
> so he performed an Nmap scan to learn more about the devices in the home.
> He discovered that the host had installed a type of camera that could be
> remotely controlled to pan, tilt, and zoom in on anything it sees. The
> expanded field of view meant that while the camera was in the living room,
> it could discreetly follow guests from room to room. The scan also revealed
> that the camera had a high-capacity storage system that lets users share
> very large files quickly across the same network.

While we are glad that Alfie found Nmap useful, there are numerous legal
issues surrounding the use of Nmap or other scanning software without the
network owner's permission. We have received questions already about the
"best way to find cameras with Nmap," which we are unfortunately unable to
answer directly because of the questionable legality of performing such a
scan. We can only remind users of Nmap's extensive documentation that
covers things like service detection (https://nmap.org/book/vscan.html) and
OS/device detection (https://nmap.org/book/osdetect.html) as well as legal
issues (https://nmap.org/book/legal-issues.html).

Happy scanning!
Dan

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