Upgrading software on a Divis DVR card

[robca 0]

I have a 16ch 120 fps Divis Dvr card that I have been using with 11.06.00 software for some time. I'd like to update the software to the new V12, but when launching setup it asks to completely remove the previous version.

 

Is there a way to upgrade from V11 to V12 without losing the settings? I can definitely remove and reinstall, but I was hoping to avoid the tedious task of reconfiguring everything (schedules, motion masks, etc)

 

Any advice from the Divis users that upgraded software before?

 

Thanks in advance, Rob

[Soundy 1]

How do you know that uninstalling the software will also remove the settings?

[robca 0]

I don't know for sure, but as a software engineer I see two red flags:

 

one, the software has not been written with an upgrade scenario in mind. Instead of asking "you have a previous version, do you want to upgrade", the setup for the new product is recognized as a uninstall for the previous

 

two, it just launches the standard Installshield uninstall, which in theory should remove everything (and it's good practice to do so)

 

I found that all the settings are stored in a file called angelcam.dat, inside the Windows directory, the passwords are stored in an easy to find registry key (and it's exceedingly easy to replace the user/password combination with a simple cut&paste) and the video files are not removed nor protected (so that if I have physical access to a machine, I can pretty much do anything)

 

It turns out there's also a security advisory, where the web server implemented by Divis is vulnerable to a remote traversal attack (a vulnerability not addressed by the vendor), which together with the above probably allows a remote exploit. If you are using a Divis card, probably it's a good idea not to use the web server functionality

 

I went ahead and upgraded anyway. As I thought, it doesn't maintain the settings, but by doing cut&paste from the original angelcam.dat and the new one, I got most of what I needed back. The already recorded video is not lost, which is what I cared the most about

 

I also discovered that V12, unlike my previous version, does not accept symbols in a password. Even worse, it doesn't tell you when you run setup. So, if for example, you chose a user name of "admin" and password of "foobar!" (no quotes), setup completes, but when you try to log in it reports a "wrong password" error. If, instead, you try to change the password from the configuration program, at least reports that the password is not matching (that was my clue). Luckily, all it takes is to edit the registry key I mentioned

 

All in all, a couple of interesting hours spent on this...