Hackers Accessed 150,000 Live Surveillance Cams In Tesla, Hospitals And Jails

A group of hackers recently breached and gained access to a network of cloud-based surveillance firm Verkada that is known to manage security systems to thousands of organisations across the nation.

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Reported first by Bloomberg, the hacker group dubbed ¡®Arson Cats¡¯ (however, also referred to as Advanced Persistent Threat or APT) gained access into Verkada after they discovered a password and username for a high-access administrative account was left publicly exposed online.

The breach allowed the hacker, Tillie Kottmann, access to 150,000 live camera feeds to observe institutions and companies in real-time. These included medical facilities, hospitals, jails, schools and even Tesla¡¯s manufacturing facilities, and Cloudflare, among several others.

Kottmann first revealed this breach on their Twitter account showing alleged images of a Tesla warehouse in Shanghai where workers are on an assembly line, stating, ¡°ever wondered what a @Tesla warehouse looks like?¡± the account was later suspended.

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Kottmann¡¯s website shows that they are an Android development company; however, Tillie has admitted to having been responsible for a number of major hacks in the past including ones at Intel Corporation and car-maker Nissan.

When asked why they decided to do this, Kottmann responded that it was because they want to end surveillance capitalism by bringing attention to the ways in which commonly found surveillance takes over human lives.

Kottmann shared, ¡°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.¡±

Cloudflare, one of the companies that were affected in this breach has made a statement, revealing that the breach that gained access to Cloudfare¡¯s facilities have been closed for months now. However, they have still gone ahead and disabled/disconnected cameras from the office network.

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Founded in 2016, Verkada is known to sell security camera systems that consumers can remotely access with the help of the internet. In January 2020, it managed to raise $80 million in venture capital funding, bringing the company¡¯s valuation to $1.6 billion.

Moments after the announcement of this breach, a Verkada spokesperson said in a statement, ¡°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.¡±