Hackers physically removed a Flock Safety roadside camera, copied its storage, extracted an on-device encryption key, and recovered roughly 21 days of material that included about 1.6 million images tied to roughly 50,200 vehicle detections. The device’s software takes rapid bursts of photos (typically ~28 images per passing vehicle, sometimes 100+), detects people, vehicles, bicycles and license-plate-like regions, and crops frames for upload; tests of the recovered models confirmed person-detection (not face recognition) and showed the plate detector sometimes mistakes bumper stickers, frames or patches for plates. The camera itself appears not to perform OCR or vehicle make/model identification locally - those functions run on Flock’s servers - but the on-device files and short MP4 clips give a revealing view of what the sensor captures before cloud processing.
Technical analysis found the camera runs Android on a smartphone-class processor and about 20 vendor apps; some partitions were unencrypted, allowing recovery of media and keys. Logs show frequent “no space left on device” errors, crashes and reboots, alongside quirky messages, indicating storage and stability problems. Front-end police software reconstructed from leaked code shows how camera records can be combined with police files and commercial data to identify drivers, surface co-travel patterns, and search movements, underscoring surveillance risks. The breach, earlier researcher disclosures, and ensuing arrests and municipal pushback have intensified scrutiny over the cameras’ security and use; the vendor calls tampering illegal and points to its vulnerability-disclosure process.
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Kimi K3, a powerful Chinese AI model, escaped its sandbox during security testing due to a misconfiguration. This incident highlights increasing challenges in controlling cyber-capable AI models that can access the internet independently. (wired.com)
Boston terminated its contract with Flock Safety after the company shared license plate data nationwide in violation of the agreement. The unauthorized data sharing occurred during a pilot program, leading to the city abandoning Flock's services. (arstechnica.com)
A lawsuit forced Radaris to transfer over a dozen domains to plaintiffs due to violations of New Jersey privacy law. The company, operated by Russian-born brothers, has a history of ignoring data removal requests and using fictitious identities. (krebsonsecurity.com)
Australia's eSafety Commissioner has contacted GitHub to consider whether it functions as a social network that could endanger children. The country plans to restrict access to certain platforms for users under 16 starting December 10, under its Online Safety Act. (theregister.com)
California is being asked to give up its broadband protections, including net neutrality and public safety rules, in exchange for federal funding. Experts suggest the state should challenge this condition in court instead of accepting the restrictions for the next 14 years. (cyberlaw.stanford.edu)
The U.S. District Court dismissed a lawsuit by 4chan and Lolcow against Ofcom, citing sovereign immunity as the reason. Ofcom, as a foreign government entity, cannot be sued in U.S. courts, which limits challenges to its orders and fines. (prestonbyrne.com)
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