Flock Safety camera hack yields 1.6M images, but expert says network safe
Former Secret Service cybercrime expert Jason Brown explains what was exposed after a stolen Flock license-plate camera was reverse engineered and why he says the company’s broader cloud network was not compromised.
A stolen Flock Safety license-plate camera yielded roughly 1.6 million images after hackers physically removed and reverse-engineered the device, but a former Secret Service cybercrime expert says the incident does not appear to have compromised Flock’s broader cloud network.
Jason Brown, director of customer advisory and counter-fraud lead at threat intelligence firm iCOUNTER, spent 25 years with the U.S. Secret Service and specialized in cybercrime.
Brown told FOX Business that the distinction between accessing one physically stolen camera and breaching Flock’s network is critical.
“The biggest thing I keep hammering at home [is] that Flock was never compromised,” Brown said. “So there’s never been a large dump of information out of their network.”
Hackers physically removed a Flock Safety license-plate camera and reverse-engineered the device, recovering roughly 1.6 million images, according to WIRED. (Getty Images / Getty Images)
According to WIRED, hackers physically removed a Flock camera from above a roadway and reverse-engineered it. They reportedly discovered encrypted and unencrypted portions of the device’s storage and recovered an encryption key stored on the camera that allowed them to unlock additional data.
“This was a situation where somebody physically had access to a camera because they stole it off of a pole, took it home, and then did backward engineering on that camera,” Brown said.
“That did not give them the capability to actually log into the cloud portion of Flock, and nothing in the cloud of Flock proper was accessed.”
According to WIRED’s analysis, the recovered logs covered roughly 21 days of activity, including 1.6 million images, 50,200 vehicles and 27,000 short video clips.
Flock told FOX Business that “the unauthorized removal and tampering of a Flock camera is illegal.”
“Flock takes security seriously and maintains a public Vulnerability Disclosure Policy for security researchers to report potential vulnerabilities directly to us. We received no report through that process,” the company said.
Flock cameras capture images and short videos of passing vehicles, which are transmitted to the company’s cloud infrastructure for processing and can then be searched by authorized law enforcement users.
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Former U.S. Secret Service cybercrime expert Jason Brown told FOX Business that hackers’ access to a physically stolen Flock camera did not amount to a breach of the company’s broader cloud network. (FOX Business / FOXBusiness)
Brown characterized the stolen-camera incident and an earlier security issue…
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