Camera switch to chinese FW

[buzurk]

Hi

I have 6 Hik cameras i got off ali about 5 years ago, all working well and in english

yesterday the camera dropped off the NVR and i could see in router it had its default IP, so i direct connected to it and found it had somehow reverted to chinese???

There was no updates that i had applied, is there any way to get it out of chinese language, i can login to web ui etc, all the other cameras are running V5.3.6 build 151103

 

[alastairstevenson]

There was no updates that i had applied,

Some of the 'hacked to English' firmware will revert to Chinese on a hard reset.
The 5.3.6 version may well be the infamous 'Dieter and Fiona' version, which has a built-in tamper protect facility that wipes out the patch and returns the camera to it's native state if fiddled with.

By any chance, was the camera accessible from the internet?
For example, by having UPnP enabled on the both the router and the camera.
If so, it could well have been messed with by anything on the internet.

 

[watchful_ip]

The hacked to English versions you refer to shouldn't revert on a simple reset camera to defaults action.

But if you wipe the configuration partition they will, as will changing the files on the camera.

It's possible an aging NAND chip could produce bit errors after all this time and why the English patch doesn't apply.