Tuesday 22 July 2014

SECuRET LiveStream, BabyCam Monitor and Java Security Settings


Some users will likely be experiencing problems using both SECuRET LiveStream and BabyCam Monitor due to the latest security features of Java. Both SECuRET LiveStream and BabyCam Monitor use Java Applets running inside the web browser to provide the video and audio feeds directly from your Android device. When you try and access the web page served up from either app, you will now likely see this popup error message:


The problem is that the apps act like mini web servers running on your Android device, i.e. you aren't connecting to a remote web server on the internet, but rather a local web server on your Android device. Java does not recognise the location of your local web server and is presented with no certificate to verify it, and now that Java is more strict in the latest versions, it blocks the app from running.

The way around this is to add the web address given to you by either SECuRET LiveStream or BabyCam Monitor to a list of security exceptions in the Java Settings. This implies that you trust the source of the Java Applet as you know the source is a local web server on your Android device as part of either SECuRET LiveStream or BabyCam Monitor.

In Windows, the settings can be found by going to the Windows Control Panel > Java > Security tab and then add the web address given to you by either SECuRET LiveStream or BabyCam Monitor to the Exception Site List, e.g. something that looks like http://192.168.0.3:8000.

You can also set the Java Security Level slider (on the same Security tab as the Exception Site List) down to medium and this should have the same effect, but may be less secure when browsing the regular internet.

Then you should be able to initialise either SECuRET LiveStream or BabyCam Monitor and have them work as expected.

Please let me know if you need more assistance or have any concerns with performing this workaround.