Ransomware is a very lucrative business for those distributing it, and it seems there's no limit to the devices they'll attenpt to infect. The latest to be targeted? Your DSLR camera.

As Check Point Research reveals, digital cameras are a great choice for ransomware as they typically contain photos that are of high value to the owner. Maybe it's an album of photos from a recent holiday, a wedding, or some other event we'd all hate to lose the memory of. In other words, we'd be more willing to pay to get them back.

Check Point recorded the video you see below to demonstrate how easy it is for your DSLR camera to be infected:

The method of infection relies on the camera being connected to a wireless network, which is becoming increasingly common as it forms a very convenient way of transferring images to a computer or printer. The standardized protocol for transferring images from a camera is the Picture Transfer Protocol (PTP). The problem is, it isn't authenticated or encrypted while offering a a range of commands to use, which led to researchers looking for vulnerabilities. They found several and got to work creating an exploit.

What Check Point ended up with is a malicious firmware update, which thanks to a PTP command allowing for remote firmware updates without need of user interaction, makes infecting a camera through a patch relatively easy to achieve.

The camera used by Check Point to carry out the ransomware research is an EOS 80D. Canon was selected as a target because it accounts for over 50 percent of the DSLR market and therefore impacts the most people if a vulnerability exists. The company was made aware of the critical vulnerabilities back in March and has issued a security advisory for its cameras requesting owners update to the latest official firmware, turn off network features when not in use, and to refrain from connecting to untrusted wireless networks.

As PTP is so widely used, Check Point believes the vulnerabilities it found won't be restricted to Canon's camera. Other vendors are likely to need to work on security patches for their devices, too.