A Silicon Valley security startup reportedly was hacked on Tuesday, exposing the live feeds of 150,000 surveillance cameras inside hospitals, schools, companies, police stations, jails, and Tesla factories.
Some of the security footage from inside in hospitals and women’s health clinics use facial-recognition technology to identify and categorize individuals captured in the footage, Bloomberg reported.
Verkada, the security startup, had a camera inside Florida hospital Halifax Health, for example, which appeared to show eight hospital workers tackling a man and pinning him to a hospital bed.
Another video, shot inside a Tesla warehouse in China, showed workers on a car assembly line. The hackers claimed they had gotten access to 222 cameras in Tesla car factories and warehouses.
DEMOCRATIC TOP REGULATOR SAYS BREAKING UP BIG TECH COULD A GOOD, ‘CONSERVATIVE’ SOLUTION
The hackers also gained access to Verkada security cameras in Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, Madison County Jail in Huntsville, Alabama, and Wadley Regional Medical Center, a hospital in Texarkana, Texas.
According to one of the hackers, Tillie Kottmann, the digital break-in was meant to highlight how widespread video surveillance is and how easy it is to hack into the security camera systems.
Kottmann has also previously taken credit for hacking chipmaker Intel and car manufacturer Nissan. Kottmann, who is part of an international hacker collective, told Bloomberg the group’s reasons for hacking are “lots of curiosity, fighting for 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.”
Verkada said they had addressed the issue internally.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER
The hack did not appear to be a complicated affair, with the hackers gaining special senior administrative level access to Verkada’s camera systems using a username and password they found on the internet. They were then able to access the entire company’s video network, including live feeds to cameras within customers’ private property themselves.
