Sricam AP003 by Sricctv

I got this camera not long ago, and as it usually happens, in addition to its main purpose it served some hours of fun!

It's one of the cheapest wireless IP cameras right now, you can find it for around 40$ depending on the store. The manufacturer is Sricctv, a company based in Shenzhen specialized in CCTV.

It uses Linux 2.6 and has a MIPS processor (MIPS 24K V4.12).


I couldn't find the firmware in the official website and they didn't agree to send me the latest version. Luckily for me I got a firmware for a camera similar to mine so I could study the system a bit without messing with the hardware.

The firmware file format is pretty straightforward. It expects a 32 bytes header string, the size of the package in a 4 byte value, a ZIP file with the contents and a 32 bytes footer:

00000000 77 69 66 69 2d 63 61 6d 65 72 61 2d 73 79 73 2d |wifi-camera-sys-|
00000010 71 65 74 79 69 70 61 64 67 6a 6c 7a 63 62 6d 6e |qetyipadgjlzcbmn|
00000020 43 17 05 00 50 4b 03 04 0a 00 00 00 00 00 e7 7e |C...PK.........~|
00051760 00 07 13 05 00 00 00 77 69 66 69 2d 63 61 6d 65 |.......wifi-came|
00051770 72 61 2d 65 6e 64 2d 6e 76 78 6b 68 66 73 6f 75 |ra-end-nvxkhfsou|
00051780 74 65 71 7a 68 70 6f |teqzhpo|

There are two types of upgrades handled by the upgrader, system upgrades and web app upgrades.

- System upgrades overwrite the main system binaries, located in /system/system/ and have this header and footer combination: wifi-camera-sys-qetyipadgjlzcbmn, wifi-camera-end-nvxkhfsouteqzhpo.

- Web app upgrades overwrite the contents in /system/www/ and have this header and footer combination: wifi-camera-app-qazwsxedcrfvtgba, wifi-camera-end-yhnujmzaqxswcdef.

Interestingly, web app upgrades are expected to contain a password protected ZIP file, but system upgrades are not. As the upgrader is in the system firmware image, we can look at the binary and locate the hardcoded password.

Telnet access for everyone!

While there are several ports listening in the camera, the most interesting are probably 23 (telnet) and 81 (default http panel). When we extracted the firmware, we located a nice string:


The encrypted password for root is easy to crack: 123456

So now we can log in to the camera via telnet with the root account and get access to all the file system.

This can also be used to disclose all the configuration, including user and password of the admin account in the web panel:

$ telnet
Connected to
Escape character is '^]'.

(none) login: root

BusyBox v1.12.1 (2013-03-02 13:26:40 CST) built-in shell (ash)

# cd /system/www/

# cat system.ini


We can change the root password, but as the passwords file is in a volatile partition of the file system, the default will be set again after reboot.

Connect the camera and say Hi to the Internet!

This bothered me a lot when I connected the camera for the first time. If your router has UPnP enabled, which is very common in SOHO routers, the camera will use this protocol to open the external port (Internet facing) of your router and forward it to the port where the web management service is listening. By default this port is 81.

If you haven't setup your credentials yet, the camera is wide open to everyone. If a vulnerability is found in the service, no matter what your configuration is, the camera will be there for sneaky eyes.

This is probably a "convenience" for non-technical users to connect from external networks using the P2P app provided by the vendor. The camera will also get the external IP of your network connecting to, so the app knows where to connect.


If you care about your privacy, this camera is not for you. I guess you get what you pay, the camera has good specifications and performance, but the software design is just horrible.