The technology company Flock Safety left at least 60 of its AI-powered surveillance cameras exposed online, raising questions about the technology’s safety. Among the live images left exposed was footage of unattended children at a playground.
The lack of security also could allow the identification of people seen on cameras in public places.
Download the SAN app today to stay up-to-date with Unbiased. Straight Facts™.
Point phone camera here
The exposure of the cameras’ live feeds was first reported by the technologist and YouTuber Benn Jordan. In a video released on Monday, he showed how a simple search engine query uncovered the cameras’ administrative panels.
Jordan, who published his findings alongside 404 Media, revealed how Flock not only exposed real-time video feeds from across the country but also 30 days’ worth of archived videos collected by the company’s Condor PTZ cameras.
“None of the data or video footage was encrypted,” Jordan said. “There was no username or password required. These were all completely public-facing for the world to see and some of them still are.”
The access could have allowed Jordan to perform numerous administrative tasks, such as changing camera settings, running diagnostics, viewing log files and deleting videos.
Footage could expose identities
While Flock is best known for its license plate-reading cameras, the Condor PTZ model is specifically designed to track people. The cameras can be configured to use artificial intelligence to automatically pan, tilt and zoom in on people who come into view.
Jordan found cameras placed in locations such as a parking lot, a stoplight, a bike path and even a children’s playground. He showed how anyone with access to the internet could use the footage to unveil people’s identities by looking up their license plates or running their faces through publicly available facial recognition tools.
“I think the one that affected me most was the playground,” Jordan told 404 Media. “You could see unattended kids, and that’s something I want people to know about so they can understand how dangerous this is.”
‘A limited misconfiguration’
In response to inquiries about the exposure, a Flock representative told 404 Media that the findings represented “a limited misconfiguration on a very small number of devices” that have “since been remedied.”
It remains unclear what caused the misconfigurations or whether other cameras are exposed.
However, Flock’s products have come under scrutiny before. Just last month, Jordan and the security researcher Jon “GainSec” Gaines revealed numerous vulnerabilities in Flock’s license plate-reading cameras that could allow anyone with physical access to obtain sensitive data.
