Hackers Got Inside a Flock Camera. Its Data Shows How the System Really Works
A hacker collective pulled down a Flock camera and dumped its data. The files included thousands of videos and logs showing that the device captured 1.6 million images of 50,000 vehicles in 21 days.
Hackers infiltrated Flock's camera system, revealing how the technology operates. The breach exposed the camera's storage and an encryption key, allowing the recovery of videos containing thousands of vehicle detections. Flock's cameras are capable of detecting people, vehicles, license plates, and bicycles. The cameras can generate dozens of images of a single vehicle, resulting in over a million images generated.
The investigation found some people were not content with simply destroying or removing the cameras, with multiple arrests for tampering or sabotaging. The hackers shared their findings with 404 Media and Distributed Denial of Secrets, who then analyzed the data. Despite much of the sensitive information remaining encrypted, the analysis showed that the software on the device detects people, not just vehicles and license plates.
Flock's cameras photograph passing vehicles and send the information to the company's servers, where it identifies license plate details and other characteristics. However, the cameras also allow other police departments nationwide to search the records, as part of Flock's national network. This network has been both a selling point and a source of controversy, with concerns over privacy and misuse.
Written by urgent.news from Wired's reporting — not their text. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.
