Anker, the parent company of Eufy, has officially admitted that its line of security cameras was not as secure as previously thought. Its products were said to use end-to-end encryption for recorded video footage — but it turns out that wasn’t always the case.
In late 2022, it was discovered that Eufy cameras had a bit of a privacy issue. Using the VLC media player, a Eufy user managed to access video through the cloud that was supposedly only stored locally. There were also reports as far back as 2021 of folks viewing camera feeds of strangers, although Eufy chalked that up to a bug that impacted only a small number of products.
Now, it seems the truth has finally been revealed. In an extended discussion with The Verge, Anker admits that there were some security issues with the Eufy lineup, although it says the problems have since been resolved. Anker admitted to cameras not being natively end-to-end encrypted, and that cameras could create unencrypted videos that were accessible through the cloud.
“Today, all videos (live and recorded) shared between the user’s device to the Eufy Security Web portal or the Eufy Security App utilize end-to-end encryption, which is implemented using AES and RSA algorithms,” reads the statement from Eric Villines, Anker’s global head of communications. “Additionally, when a user uses the Eufy Security App to access videos from their devices, the connection between the Eufy Security App and the user’s device is end-to-end encrypted through a secure [peer-to-peer] service.”
Villines also notes that the Eufy Web portal was “not designed to support P2P encryption for viewing live streams” and instead relied on a “user login to the Web portal.” Villines goes on to say that this clearly wasn’t enough protection, and the issues have “been fixed.”
While there’s obviously been a breach of trust between Eufy and its users, it seems the company is attempting to right the wrong and get its products up to the standards expected by the smart home community. If you’re interested in learning more, you can check out Eufy’s official privacy commitment.
