US HACKERS TAP INTO 150,000 CAMERAS AT BANKS, JAILS, TESLA

Wed 10 March 2021:

A US hacker collective on Tuesday claimed to have tapped into footage from 150,000 security cameras at banks, jails, schools, carmaker Tesla and other sites to expose “the surveillance state.”

Images captured from hacked surveillance video were posted on Twitter with an #OperationPanopticon hashtag.

Cybercriminals has hacked into Verkada, an enterprise surveillance video company. As per reports, the hackers were able to access the live footage from over 150,000 cameras in Tesla facilities and other companies like Cloudflare. Some of the cameras that were hacked used facial recognition technology to identify and track people on screen. Verkada is situated in Silicon Vallery.

“What if we just absolutely ended surveillance capitalism in two days?” a purported member of a group called APT-69420 Arson Cats asked amid a string of tweeted images.

“This is the tip of the tip of the tip of the iceberg.”

The hacker group claimed to have ferreted out credentials of an high level administrator account at Silicon Valley firm Verkada, which runs a platform operating security systems online.

Surveillance camera imagery posted on Twitter included a jail cell block and a man wearing a fake beard dancing in a bank storage room.

Apart from Tesla, the Verkada breach had also affected another company called Cloudfare. A spokesperson of the San Francisco-based company was quoted by Bloomberg as saying, “This afternoon we were alerted that the Verkada security camera system that monitors main entry points and main thoroughfares in a handful of Cloudflare offices may have been compromised.

The cameras were located in a handful of offices that have been officially closed for several months.” Soon after the company was informed about the breach they disabled the camera and disconnected them from the office networks. Tesla is yet to issue a statement about the same.