Fulu Foundation Drops $10K Bounty to Hack Ring Doorbells Off Amazon’s Cloud
Fulu Foundation Drops $10K Bounty to Hack Ring Doorbells Off Amazon’s CloudLouis Rossmann wants you to rip Ring’s surveillance cord — and he’s paying cash for it
$10,000 base bounty. Up to $20K with matched donations. One goal: make your Ring doorbell stop snitching to Amazon.
The Fulu Foundation — the right-to-repair nonprofit run by YouTube’s most aggressive Apple critic — just put a price on Ring’s head. Between you and me, this is the most interesting hacking bounty I’ve seen in months.
🧩 Dumb Mode Dictionary
| Term | What It Actually Means |
|---|---|
| Fulu Foundation | Louis Rossmann’s nonprofit that pays hackers to break vendor lock-in on consumer gadgets |
| Ring Search Party | AI feature scanning ALL Ring cameras in a neighborhood to find lost dogs. Turned on by default. Yeah. |
| Flock Safety | Surveillance company that makes license plate readers for cops. Ring was partnered with them. Was. |
| Section 1201 (DMCA) | The law that makes it a crime to share tools that bypass digital locks — even on stuff you own |
| Local storage | Your footage lives on YOUR server/PC, not Jeff Bezos’s hard drives |
| Vendor lock-in | When a company makes it impossible to use your hardware without their cloud services |
📖 The Backstory: How Ring Blew Up Its Own Reputation
Ring spent somewhere between $8–10 million on a Super Bowl ad showing their new “Search Party” feature finding a lost puppy. Cute, right?
Here’s the problem:
- Search Party scans footage from ALL Ring cameras in a neighborhood using AI
- It’s enabled by default — you have to manually opt out
- A leaked internal email suggested the system could expand beyond animals to track people
- Ring had an active partnership with Flock Safety, a company that builds automated license plate readers for law enforcement
The backlash was instant. People started smashing their Ring cameras on social media. Ring CEO Jamie Siminoff launched an apology tour. And Ring quietly killed the Flock Safety partnership within days.
→ One Super Bowl ad → millions in PR damage → entire partnership canceled → and now a bounty on your product. Beautiful.
💰 The Bounty: What Fulu Actually Wants
The Fulu Foundation is offering cold hard cash to the first person (or team) who can do this:
| Requirement | Details |
|---|---|
| Base bounty | $10,000 |
| Matched donations | Fulu matches community contributions up to another $10K |
| Total possible | $20,000+ |
| Eligible devices | Ring doorbells released 2021 or later |
| The goal | Integrate Ring with a local PC/server |
| The kill shot | Device must stop sending ANY data to Amazon servers |
| Time limit | Solution must take less than 1 hour to implement |
| Tools | Must use readily available tools |
| On-device features | Motion detection, night vision, etc. must still work |
Kevin O’Reilly, Fulu cofounder, put it clean: “Control is at the heart of security. If we don’t control our data, we don’t control our devices.”
⚠️ The DMCA Problem Nobody Wants to Talk About
Here’s the catch — and it’s a big one.
Section 1201 of the DMCA makes it a federal crime to distribute tools that circumvent digital locks. So even if someone wins this bounty and builds the perfect local Ring solution…
→ Building it for yourself? Probably fine.
→ Sharing it publicly? That’s where lawyers start calling.
O’Reilly said it himself: “Because of Section 1201 and its frankly antiquated and outdated policies, people aren’t going to be able to do that.”
Winners can choose whether to publish their work. But if they do, they accept whatever legal heat comes with it. This is the angle that makes the whole thing spicy — Fulu is basically daring someone to challenge a 1998 copyright law using a 2024 doorbell camera.
🗣️ Why This Matters More Than You Think
Ring has a long, ugly history with privacy:
- 2019–2022: Shared footage with 2,000+ police departments without warrants
- 2023: FTC fined Ring for accessing customer videos and poor data security
- 2024: Ring ended its police partnership program (but the damage was done)
- 2026: Search Party launches, Flock Safety partnership surfaces, Super Bowl backlash explodes
And here’s the bigger picture — Ring isn’t the only one pulling this trick. Your Nest camera, your Blink, your SimpliSafe — they all route through someone else’s cloud. You “own” the hardware. You rent the functionality.
Fulu’s bounty isn’t just about one doorbell. It’s a proof of concept. If someone cracks Ring, the playbook works on everything else too.
📊 The Competition: Doorbells That Already Store Locally
You don’t actually need Ring. Here’s what already exists:
| Brand | Local Storage | Cloud Optional | Price Range |
|---|---|---|---|
| Reolink | Yes (microSD/NVR) | Yes | $50–120 |
| Eufy | Yes (HomeBase) | Yes | $100–200 |
| Aqara | Yes (hub storage) | Yes | $80–130 |
| Amcrest | Yes (microSD/NAS) | Yes | $40–100 |
| Ring | No | No | $100–250 + subscription |
Between you and me, if you’re buying a new doorbell camera today, there’s zero reason to pick Ring. But if you’ve already got one bolted to your wall? That’s who this bounty is for.
Cool. Amazon’s watching your porch. Now What the Hell Do We Do? ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
🔧 Hustle #1: Build a Local NVR Setup Service for Ring Refugees
Thousands of people are ripping Ring cameras off their walls right now. They still want a doorbell camera — they just don’t want Amazon watching. Here’s what you do: offer a done-for-you local NVR (network video recorder) installation using Reolink or Eufy hardware plus Frigate or Scrypted for AI detection.
Charge $150–300 per install. Post on local Facebook groups, Nextdoor, and r/homedefense. Target privacy-conscious homeowners who don’t want to figure out Docker and RTSP streams themselves.
Example: A smart home installer in Melbourne, Australia started offering “Ring Replacement Kits” on Gumtree after a local news story about Ring privacy. He bundles a Reolink doorbell + Raspberry Pi 4 + Frigate setup for AUD $450 installed. He’s doing 8–10 installs a month → roughly $2,400/month AUD profit after hardware costs.
Timeline: 1–2 weeks to build your first kit and get listed. Revenue from week 3.
💰 Hustle #2: Actually Go After the Bounty
I mean… $10K–$20K is sitting there. If you’ve got embedded systems experience or you’re comfortable with firmware reversing, this is your play. Ring doorbells run on custom ARM chips with Amazon’s proprietary firmware. The attack surface includes the RTSP stream (which some older models expose), the local network communication protocols, and potentially the OTA update mechanism.
Start with older Ring models from eBay ($20–40 used). Document everything. Even if you don’t win, the research is publishable and builds serious credibility in the right-to-repair and IoT security community.
Example: A security researcher in Warsaw, Poland reverse-engineered a Xiaomi camera’s cloud dependency in 2024 and published the findings on GitHub. The repo hit 4,000 stars. He now does paid IoT security consulting for European smart home companies at €120/hour.
📱 Hustle #3: Create a 'Privacy Audit' Service for Smart Homes
Most people have no idea what their smart home devices are sending back to the cloud. Here’s what you do: build a Raspberry Pi-based network monitor (Pi-hole + ntopng + custom dashboard) that shows exactly which devices are phoning home and where.
Package it as a “Smart Home Privacy Audit” — one-time visit, scan everything, deliver a report with recommendations. Charge $200–500 per household. Upsell local alternatives for the worst offenders.
Example: A freelance pentester in Toronto, Canada started offering residential IoT audits on Fiverr after the Ring controversy went viral. He charges CAD $350 per audit and delivers a branded PDF report. He’s averaging 6 audits per month — roughly $1,500 USD/month as a side hustle on top of his day job.
🎓 Hustle #4: Launch a 'De-Cloud Your Life' Course or Guide
The Ring situation is one symptom of a much bigger trend — people are waking up to the fact that they don’t own anything they’ve bought. Build a course (or even a detailed guide on Gumroad) covering how to replace cloud-dependent devices with local alternatives. Cover cameras, doorbells, thermostats, voice assistants, and storage.
Price it at $29–49 for a written guide, or $79–149 for a video course. Market it on privacy-focused subreddits (r/privacy, r/selfhosted, r/degoogle), privacy YouTube channels, and Mastodon.
Example: A sysadmin in Berlin, Germany created a “Self-Hosted Smart Home” guide on Gumroad after GDPR enforcement ramped up. It covers Home Assistant, local cameras, and NAS setup. At €39 per copy, he’s sold 320+ copies over 8 months → about €12,500 total. No customer support needed because the guide is just that thorough.
💼 Hustle #5: Flip Privacy-Ready Camera Kits on eBay/Etsy
Buy Reolink or Eufy doorbells in bulk (10+ units gets you wholesale pricing). Pre-configure them with local storage enabled and cloud features disabled. Bundle with a 128GB microSD card and a simple setup guide. Sell as “Privacy-First Doorbell Camera Kits” on eBay, Etsy, or your own Shopify store.
Target the exact demographic currently rage-quitting Ring. Mark up $40–60 per unit. The value add is the pre-configuration and the peace of mind.
Example: An electronics hobbyist in São Paulo, Brazil started flipping pre-configured Xiaomi cameras on MercadoLibre with Portuguese-language setup guides and local RTSP streaming pre-enabled. He buys at R$180, sells at R$380, moves about 25 units/month → roughly $1,000 USD/month profit.
🛠️ Follow-Up Actions
| Step | Action |
|---|---|
| 1 | Check Fulu’s bounty page at bounties.fulu.org for full rules and eligibility |
| 2 | Join r/selfhosted and r/homeassistant — this is where the technical community lives |
| 3 | Follow Louis Rossmann’s YouTube channel for bounty updates and DMCA developments |
| 4 | If going after the bounty: grab a used Ring doorbell on eBay and start poking around |
| 5 | Set up a Pi-hole on your own network first — you’ll be shocked at what phones home |
| 6 | Look at Frigate NVR and Scrypted as open-source camera management platforms |
Quick Hits
| Want… | Do… |
|---|---|
 Claim the bounty yourself |
Study Ring’s firmware, grab a used unit, start reversing |
 Make money off the backlash |
Sell local camera install services to Ring refugees |
| See what YOUR devices are leaking |
Set up Pi-hole + ntopng on a Raspberry Pi this weekend |
 Replace Ring right now |
Reolink or Eufy doorbell + microSD card = done in 20 minutes |
 Build a long-term play |
Create a de-clouding course while the outrage is still hot |
Amazon spent $10 million on a Super Bowl ad. Now someone’s getting $10K to undo it. The math checks out.
!