The compromised cameras may be up to five years old, and rarely have firmware updates; it’s likely many customers will never bother updating

Since the link for each feed is the IP address of the camera appended with the code that allows you to access the stream, it’s not too hard to track down exactly who you’re looking at. One feed showed an older man sitting at his computer at home; 4chan suspected he was masturbating and quickly tracked down his home address. The lack of a phone number thwarted their plans to call him up and watch as he answered.

The particular camera that the security bug was discovered in is a discontinued model that sells for around $70, though Someluser says the bug existed in additional models, meaning a wider range of camera owners are vulnerable (including, but perhaps not limited to, models TV-IP110W, TV-IP110WN, TV-IP121WN, and TV-IP410). The leaked feeds were a mix of small businesses — a store entrance or a stack of servers — and private homes. Several of these residential use cameras were aimed at a crib, suggesting that these were being used as baby monitors or even "nanny cams" to monitor childcare workers. None of the homes with cameras appeared to be particularly lavish, which suggests the cameras were not as much for protecting valuable property as they were to monitor residents or employees.

On January 30th, Trendnet issued a critical update that addresses the security flaw for that camera. Zak Wood, the Director of Global Marketing for the company sent me an email that read, in part: "We became aware of it when it was reported on a public forum (very recently). This is a major concern and we dedicated significant resources to fix this issue immediately." As of this writing, most of the feeds are still active, meaning the customers have not yet updated their firmware, which Trendnet recommends doing over a secure (wired) internet connection. The compromised cameras may be up to five years old, and rarely have firmware updates; it’s likely many customers will never bother updating. "We emailed all customers who registered their product with Trendnet informing them of the recommendation to download new firmware and we have posted a high priority note in the downloads area," he continued. "This information will also be in our monthly newsletter this month which has extensive reach."