Arlo Pro 3 hacked/jammed

[Satty]

Hello,

I got Arlo Pro 3 and the Video doorbell installed on my front door. Looks the man next door jamming my camera. When he passes through my house, motion detected in my doorbell camera and he touching his mobile and looking into the Arlo Pro 3 camera. At that moment the video froze on the doorbell and none of these events not captured in the Arlo Pro 3.

This happened 3 times, by the same man and all the times the video froze when he touch the mobile.

Any advice on how to prevent this?

Thanks

[jguerdat]

Use the videos (download them now!) to show police.

[Satty]

Thank you for the reply.

Can you advice how can I find does he jamming the signal or he entered into my wifi? I am bit worried does he entered to my wifi network and need to stop imm.

Thanks,

[StephenB]

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@Satty wrote:

Can you advice how can I find does he jamming the signal or he entered into my wifi?

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It's more likely he is jamming the signal (and using a portable wifi jammer, not a mobile phone). In most places this is illegal.   There are gadgets (RF spectrum analyzers that cover the WiFi band) that you could purchase to prove this, but they are generally expensive.  You could alternatively connect your phone to your home 2.4 Ghz wifi (ahead of time) and see if its wifi also drops when the camera disconnects.  But you might not have enough time to do that test.

You know who it is, correct?  So you could complain to the police.  Confronting him personally is not a good idea.

The Pro 3 connects to a closed wifi network hosted by your base station.  He wouldn't be able to control the camera by simply penetrating your home wifi.   You can change the password of your Arlo account - and out of an abundance of caution, also change the password and maybe the network name of your home wifi.  If your system can be controlled by Alexa (Google, Apple), then change that password also.

[Satty]

Thanks for the reply Steve.

Yes, I know the person, and definitely going to contact police. As already they visited once when we had issue, an I made a complaint.

Just a quick question, if I keep the base station close to the camera will it won't affected by the jammer?

Thanks,

[StephenB]

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@Satty wrote:

Just a quick question, if I keep the base station close to the camera will it won't affected by the jammer?

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It depends on the amount of interference created by the jammer.  It can potentially disrupt any wifi connection if it is strong enough.  There are some other things he could be trying I guess, but I'd rather not speculate on them here.

Wired cameras avoid this problem, but of course are more difficult to install.  Arlo is focussed on wireless though, their only wired camera is the Q Plus - and that is indoor only.  It uses Power over Ethernet (PoE), so you'd either need a PoE ethernet switch or a PoE power injector.

[Mark-V]

Hi @Satty ,

Your post caught my attention, as I'm also curious as to what the person could be doing to cause the stream to go out. Both the Pro 3 and Video Doorbell use 2.4GHz to communicate, same as Wi-Fi. If he's using a jammer, it will affect both. Moving the Base Station won't do any good against that.

What might be useful for us would be timestamps and video samples of the issue. I can try to compare the time of the video to the logs and see what happened with traffic at the time. I can't promise to find anything, but I'd like to check. Could you send me a Private Message with a shared video and a timestamp of when this happened most recently?

The other thing to check is to see if other non-Arlo devices were also affected. If it's actually a jammer, then it will also affect other devices in the area. Are there other Wi-Fi devices operating in the area that could have been interrupted?

For reporting this to authorities: in the UK you may want to also contact Ofcom, as they deal with communications-related issues such as jammers.

Thank you,

Mark V

L3 Tech

[Satty]

Hi Mark,

Thank you for the reply. Maybe he dint realise the Doorbell is capturing his motion. The moment after his action even the Doorbell froze and flickering. I have sent you the details in the private message. Please let me know in case of any more details.

Thanks,