@Samlowrybrazil
Congratulations on buying an E4 and finding this forum.
The current situation is that FLIR have done what they likely wish they had done in the original E4 firmware.
They have significantly increased the difficulty in upgrading the cameras configuration files.
You need to read back in this threads history to see how FLIR responded to the upgrade of the E4. They were limited in what could be done to the standard firmware build in terms of countermeasures. They applied basic protection that was circumvented by members of this forum. I should state, even these measures required the significant knowledge of some clever guys to get around them.
The original upgrade was relatively simple as the only challenge was to recalculate the CRC01 checksum for the modified configuration files. A clever forum member wrote the required CRC01 calculator and shared it with us. He deserves recognition for his work !
This first upgrade technique did not really qualify as a 'hack' of the camera. As FLIR placed ever more challenging barriers in the way of the upgrade, it began to edge into the world of hacking in order to beat thiese countermeasures. The defensive capabilities of the early firmware and hardware was not that great however and clever people found ways to still upgrade the camera configuration files.
Now jump to 2017 and the release of FLIR's Wi-Fi equipped Ex series. Both 2017 Wi-Fi and non Wi-Fi capable Ex series cameras use the same hardware platform and firmware. With this new version of the Ex series, FLIR have put some decent effort into thwarting attempts to upgrade the cameras. Changes to the firmware are no longer a 'simple' case of calculating CRC01 and CRC03 values. The camera appears to now be protected using public-private key encryption.
If you are not familiar with P-P encryption you may wish to google it to see how effective it can be. This is not the place for an encryption lesson. If I were just to say that even Governments hate P-P encryption, that is done well, you will understand the challenge that the'front door' security of the Ex series now presents. There are sometimes ways to circumvent encryption via a back door that provides access to what is needed but you are well and truly into hacking territory now.
The two vulnerabilities that the Ex series camera still exhibits are its use of Win CE and the fact that physical access to the hardware is still unprotected from hacking. These vulnerabilities would take significant effort and knowledge to exploit though.
Basically, if FLIR have indeed gone down the route of P-P encryption, and have done it properly, had it penetration tested, and it has passed the tests without P-P key vulnerabilities, the E4 2017 model will likely remain unhacked for a very long time !
A way around the current situation would be to gain access to the hardware, meaning the chipset, and then placing a cloned copy of an earlier E4 camera onto the platform. This is a VERY significant challenge as all flash memory areas need to be accessed to complete the cloning operation. All the original calibration data would be lost and the camera would need to be recalibrated and a new dead pixel map created. I am not saying this cannot be done, but it is more effort than the camera is worth. Better to buy a used E4 that can be upgraded.
I own two E4 cameras that are running the excellent, and very upgrade friendly firmware 1.19. Firmware 1.19 even has the excellent service menu for dead pixel map updating present in it (later removed by FLIR) Both are upgraded to E8+ spec
I will be selling one of them as I now have an E60+. If anyone is interested, let me know
. .... end of advert !
Fraser
UK