A massive trove of security-camera data collected by Silicon Valley startup Verkada Inc. is claimed to be breached by a group of hackers as per the Bloomberg report.
How Did This Happen?
The said hackers have gained access to the live feeds of 150,000 surveillance cameras inside hospitals, companies, police departments, prisons and schools.
With this breach, several companies’ footage is compromised and the list includes famous names like carmaker Tesla Inc. and software provider Cloudflare Inc.
Not only that, but the hackers were also able to view the videos from inside women’s health clinics, psychiatric hospitals and the offices of Verkada itself.
It becomes more sensitive since some of the cameras, including in hospitals, use facial-recognition technology to identify and categorize people captured on the footage.
Additionally, the hackers have the access to the full video archive of all Verkada customers.
Why Would This Happen?
Moving ahead, the task of breaching the data was carried out by an international hacker collective.
According to Tillie Kottmann, their main intention is to show the pervasiveness of video surveillance and the ease with which systems could be broken into.
Tillie Kottmann is one of the hackers who claimed credit for breaching San Mateo, California-based Verkada.
Previously, Kottmann has claimed credit for hacking chipmaker Intel Corp. and carmaker Nissan Motor Co. Kottmann.
Further, Kottmann mentioned their reasons for hacking are “lots of curiosity, fighting for the freedom of information and against intellectual property, a huge dose of anti-capitalism, a hint of anarchism — and it’s also just too much fun not to do it.”
What Does Verkada Say?
Talking about the incident, a Verkada spokesperson said “We have disabled all internal administrator accounts to prevent any unauthorized access,”.
“Our internal security team and external security firm are investigating the scale and scope of this issue, and we have notified law enforcement,” the spokesperson added.
Currently, Verkada’s chief information security officer with an internal team and an external security firm are investigating the intensity of the incident.
Further, the company is working to notify customers and also setting up a support line to address questions, sources informed.
“Based on our current understanding, the cameras being hacked are only installed in one of our suppliers, and the product is not being used by our Shanghai factory or any of our Tesla stores or services centers. Our data collected from Shanghai factories and other places mentioned are stored on local servers,” said Tesla.
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