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Tesla production in Shanghai: the camera manufacturer examines "the extent of the problem"
Photo: Ding Ting / imago images / Xinhua
According to a media report, unknown persons have tapped 150,000 surveillance cameras operated by a US company in hospitals, prisons, schools and police stations.
Companies such as the electric car manufacturer Tesla and the IT security company Cloudflare were also affected, as the financial service Bloomberg reported.
The perpetrators showed recordings from the Tesla site in Shanghai.
The Californian start-up Verkada, from which the cameras come, told Bloomberg in an initial reaction that they were investigating "the extent of the problem."
Verkada advertises, among other things, with its face recognition.
The system could, for example, warn if a certain person comes into view of the cameras.
When investigating incidents, the pictures could also be searched for the color of clothing or gender characteristics, emphasizes Verkada on the company website.
The image recognition can also read car license plates.
In the corona pandemic, the company introduced a function that sounds the alarm if more people than allowed in one place.
Access data for »super administrator« open on the net
The hackers showed Bloomberg, according to the report, images from a police station in the US state of Massachusetts, a prison in Alabama and a hospital in Florida.
In the prison they managed to tap 330 cameras.
At Tesla there were 222 cameras.
They would also have gained access to the Verkada customers' video archive.
It is rather unusual that stored internal recordings are not only accessible to the company or the institution itself.
According to their own statements, the perpetrators had discovered access data for an administrator account with extensive access that were publicly available on the Internet.
As a "super administrator" you could control a large number of cameras.
The hackers only lost access after Bloomberg made a request to the company on the subject.
The hackers made a list of Verkada customers available to Vice magazine.
The 24,000 entries include bars, shops, apartment buildings, churches, airports and universities in the USA and Canada.
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pbe / dpa