Hackers Extract 1.6 Million Images From One Flock Camera as Employees Weigh Exits

The hacker collective stegan0gram took down one Flock camera and made a near-complete copy of its storage drive, 404 Media reported. The material was shared with 404 Media and the nonprofit Distributed Denial of Secrets, which passed it to Wired. The report identified about 50,200 vehicles in Flock's media files. The storage contained images and videos captured over 21 days; older logs were either overwritten or inaccessible.

The camera could detect people as well as vehicles and license plates, raising questions about how well the privacy of innocent members of the public is protected. 404 Media found no evidence that facial recognition was used. The hackers said they found two partitions when they accessed the camera's Android operating system. Inside a partition labeled "media," they found a decryption key that unlocked a storage area holding the images and video clips.

Flock has previously claimed that images and videos are stored only briefly on the device after being sent to Flock's servers, and that no decryption keys are stored on the devices. The hackers' discovery of stored media going back many weeks, and a means to decrypt it, appears to contradict those statements.

As Flock faces a near-constant barrage of negative press, Wired reported that the company opened a voluntary separation program offering a "generous" severance package to employees seeking a way out. The program is open until Oct. 2, with decisions announced Oct. 9. People familiar with the program but not authorized to discuss it publicly told Wired that morale is so low that a significant number of Flock's roughly 1,500 employees may try to depart.

Flock's CEO said on the All-In podcast in August that internal morale has been the biggest casualty amid escalating hostility to the company's devices. One apparently disgruntled employee told Wired, "When you see enough of the vandalism [aimed at Flock cameras], you know the writing is on the wall."