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Recently I bought an IPcamera in order to test its security. Unfortunately, it just has 2 ports open :

  • 554/tcp RTSP
  • 5000/tcp UPnP

I was pretty sure the ipcamera would poke my router and open up internet facing port (that's what UPnP is suppose to do, right?) through which I can test further but unfortunately that is not the case.

My home router (D-Link) has UPnP disabled by default. I explicitly enabled UPnP on the router to test for open ports but ipcam is not opening any port facing internet.

Question:

  • If ipcam is not opening internet facing port then what is UPnP used for in the ipcam ?
  • Why is ipcam not opening external port even after UPnp enabled in router?
v1h5
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    UPnP is not just for opening ports. It is also used for device discovery; i.e. so devices can find each other on the network without specifically being configured to talk. Also, a UPnP client would be the one requesting ports opened, not a server on the device. Maybe it doesn't open ports, but uses a cloud server instead. – multithr3at3d Feb 14 '20 at 01:08
  • how does an ipcamera connect to its cloud server ? I cannot see any other ports open. Please pardon my silly questions. I am very new to iot :| – v1h5 Feb 14 '20 at 04:52
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    that's not as much of an IoT question as it is a networking question. Devices making outbound connections don't "open ports" when doing so. – multithr3at3d Feb 14 '20 at 22:13
  • "What is UPnP used for?" This is very easy to look up: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Plug_and_Play – schroeder Feb 15 '20 at 12:27
  • "Why is ipcam not setting up port forwarding on my router?" Because it doesn't need to have a remote server connect to *it*. It only needs to connect *out*. This is not a security question but a very basic networking question. – schroeder Feb 15 '20 at 12:28

1 Answers1

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It just opens an outbound connection to the server, like a regular user would to upload to youtube or stream to twitch.

Jasen
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