According to a recent Bloomberg report, Verkada, a San Mateo, Silicon Valley security startup company that provides cloud-based security camera services, has suffered a major security breach. Hackers gained access to over 150,000 of its camera feeds, including cameras in Tesla factories and warehouses, Cloudflare offices, Equinox gyms, hospitals, jails, schools, police stations, and Verkada’s own offices.
One of the hackers who claimed credit for the breach is Tillie Kottmann, who has reportedly hacked Intel Corp. and Nissan Motor Corp.
The hackers’s method to gain access was unsophisticated: Kottmann said the hackers found a user name and password for the “Super Admin” account publicly exposed on the internet. This allowed them to peer into the cameras of all of Verkada’s customers.
In a statement, a Verkada spokesperson said they had disabled all internal admin accounts, to prevent any further unauthorized access.
Kottmann said the hackers’ 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.”
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