The Strange Case of Dollcam

I likes me some cam hacking; random webcams used for building security or just attached to an unsecured network somewhere. The best ones are often found right out in the open, via a special Google search. I've seen some wonderful stuff over the years - from hundreds of Chinese people ballroom dancing to sunrise over Los Angeles - but few are as cool as the Dollcam. At least, that's my name for it. 85.235.16.148 is the IP address used by a single Axis brand webcam to stream video of a a doll on a turntable. Specifically, a blonde doll in national costume spinning endlessly in front of a picture of mountains. That's it. Some person or persons set up this scene in front of a $200 camera, hooked it up to a Swedish broadband connection and keeps it supplied with electricity. In the weeks I've been watching it the camera has moved once, so its now closer to the doll. There must be a motive, a static IP alone would cost me GBP 20 or so, but I'm absolutely stumped as to what its purpose is. Googling turns up some comment about this cam from last November when (shock!), it apparently stopped spinning.

A fertile imagination could turn a few possibilities, maybe the doll's part of a window display in a travel agency, and it's nobodys job to fix a broken camera mount that should face the other way. Maybe its not a camera at all, it's a web server with a loop of video that's emulating a webcam, but is really a disguised front door to some sort of private service, not for public consumption. Maybe it's a demonstration model, or a honeypot. Security people do that sometimes, they'll set up a system with no apparent purpose to the public in the hope that they'll get hacked or infected with viruses, so that they can catch samples of wild malware for study and learn of new exploits on their firmware. Maybe its an art project, and in some gallery somewhere is a big projected map of the world with little people icons that light up to show the location of humans and robots watching the doll. (continues after the jump)

I found a camera once that wasn't a webcam at all, it was a spidered copy of a Panasonic camera console, but instead of an MJPEG video stream there was a WMV embed of a teen girl in a bra, which would would keep you watching long enough for the site to install malware on IE. It was a virus delivery site crudely disguised as a camera. I was peeved about that, mostly because I'd had an idea to do something similar (no viruses) awhile ago and had been too busy to get around to it. MJPEG video streams are easy enough to do with PHP, I was going to set up a fake cam, prefect in all detail, showing important footage from history, the LA riots, Nuremberg rallies, the Pope getting shot in 1981, the end of apartheid in South Africa, stuff like that, but I never got round to finding the bandwidth or the time. Another now.

If this is your doll and camera, please drop me an email, I'd like to know.