Hackers stole a Flock camera and found 27,321 video clips, 1.6 million images, and an encryption key
Hackers known as stegan0gram physically removed a Flock license plate reader and discovered unencrypted storage containing 27,321 video clips and 1.6 million images. The investigation revealed that an encryption key was stored directly on the device, contradicting Flock's previous claims that physical access would not expose captured footage. This incident adds to growing concerns about data security and privacy, contributing to a trend of cities canceling contracts with the surveillance company.
- ▪The hackers found an encryption key on the device that unlocked a partition containing 27,321 short video clips and logs of 1.6 million images.
- ▪Recovered logs indicated the camera captured approximately 28 images per vehicle, with some vehicles triggering over 100 images.
- ▪The software detected people in 11 of the recovered videos, all of whom were riding motorcycles, though no active facial recognition was found.
- ▪Flock stated that unauthorized removal of its cameras is illegal and claimed it lacked sufficient detail to assess the hackers' claims.
- ▪The findings contradict Flock's prior assertion that images remain on cameras only briefly after upload, suggesting a longer retention period.
2 outlets in our directory ran this story, first to last over 3 hours. All of the coverage we found sits in one bucket: centre. That one-sidedness is itself worth noticing.
TechSpot files mainly under tech. We currently carry 452 of its stories.
Story provenance
Source · retrieval · rights · ranking — open for full record
inspect →
Story provenance
Attribution is not the same as permission. This drawer separates discovery metadata, excerpts, WeSearch-generated summaries, reuse status, and whether the publisher receives the visit. Nothing here claims a legal grant the publisher has not made.
Record
| Original publisher | TechSpot |
| Canonical URL | https://www.techspot.com/news/113887-hackers-stole-flock-camera-found-27321-video-clips.html |
| Publication time | Thu, 17 Sep 2026 09:13 -0500 |
| Retrieval time | 2026-09-17T14:13:44.339Z |
| Last seen | 2026-09-17T14:13:44.339Z |
| Headline source | Publisher (no WeSearch rewrite) |
| Excerpt source | publisher body |
| Excerpt method | First ~120 words (~800 chars) of extracted publisher body, fair-use limited. |
| Summary | WeSearch · cerebras-chat (WeSearch summarizer) |
| Summary source text | contentText |
| Citation coverage | Summary is a WeSearch-generated derivative; primary citation is the original publisher URL. |
| Cluster | 8yQEwHJa3vbl · 2 stories |
| Cluster logic | Grouped by semantic title/content similarity across sources within a rolling window. Same-publisher template collisions are excluded from coverage comparison. |
| Ranking reason | Story pages are not engagement-ranked. Hub feeds use recency, with optional source-diversified chronological ordering (cap consecutive stories per source). No personalized ranking. |
| Publisher visit | Yes — open original |
| Substitutes article? | No — link-out required for full text |
Rights status (four layers)
WeSearch handling by dimension
| Indexing | May the item be indexed (stored, ranked, made findable)? | Allowed |
| Snippet | May a short excerpt of the publisher's text be shown? | Allowed |
| AI summary | May WeSearch generate its own short summary of the article? | Limited |
| Retrieval / RAG | May the content be exposed for third-party retrieval-augmented generation? | Not asserted |
| Model training | May the content be used to train AI models? | Not asserted |
| Commercial reuse | May the content be reused commercially? | Not permitted |
Basis: Derived from the published RSS/Atom feed. Contact: [email protected]. Reviewed: 2026-07-24.
Opening excerpt (first ~120 words) tap to expand
Security Tech Culture flock surveillance Hackers stole a Flock camera and found 27,321 video clips, 1.6 million images, and an encryption key The findings appear to contradict Flock's previous claims about stored footage By Rob Thubron September 17, 2026, 9:13 Add TechSpot Serving tech enthusiasts for over 25 years. TechSpot means tech analysis and advice you can trust. WTF?! It seems that Flock just can't stop making headlines these days – none of them good, of course. The latest report illustrating why so many cities are dropping the license plate readers involves hackers who physically pulled a camera down from above a roadway, copied its storage, and found an encryption key sitting on the device itself. Convenient.
…
Excerpt limited to ~120 words for fair-use compliance. The full article is at TechSpot.
Discussion
0 commentsMore from TechSpot
