A group of hackers named Advanced Persistent Threat 69420 stated that they had accessed a massive pile of security-camera data collected by Silicon Valley startup Verkada Inc. On Wednesday, Twitter has blocked a member of the said group who claimed responsibility for breaching the security camera company.
Twitter Blocked Member of Advance Persistent Threat 69420
Newsweek reported that the Twitter accoiunt of a member of the Advanced Persistent Threat 69420 Twitter has been suspended. The group member named Tillie Kottman was removed from the social media platform after the group disclosed how it had access to live feeds from more than 150,000 of Verkada's security cameras.
Verkada claims to offer "powerful security technology" and says that all of its cameras comes with artificial intelligence-powered analytics, giving its customers the ability to conduct facial recognition, vehicle detection, and heatmaps. In 2019, the company stated in its blog post that users could search and filter based on many different attributes, including gender traits, clothing color and even a person's face.
The Advanced Persistent Threat 69420 Group
Bloomberg first reported the hacking and showed footage exposing a variety of users, including police departments, prisons, schools, hospitals, and businesses, with the most high-profile appearing to be Tesla and Cloudflare.
Kottman told the publication that the hacking had infiltrated Verkada's network via super admin account after credentials were left vulnerable. That gave the group control over the cameras, meaning they could easily be accessed and viewed.
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This hacking method showed the type of impact on email-based breachings, such as spear-phishing attacks that use social engineering to fool a company's employees to hand over credentials.
The hacker added that data was carried out by an international hacker collective and was intended to show the pervasiveness of video surveillance and the ease with which systems could be broken into. Kottman stated the reason for its group's actions was curiosity, fighting for the freedom of information and against intellectual property, a dose of anti-capitalism, anarchism and also "just too much fun not to do it."
Tillie Kottman is one of the hackers responsible for breaching chipmaker Intel Corp. and carmaker Nissan Motor Inc.
Places the APT 68420 Hacked
The Advanced Persistent Threat 69420 claimed that the group had hacked security cameras from inside Florida hospital Halifax Health, appearing to show eight hospital staffs pinning down a man and then restraining him to bed.
The hacker group also found their way into a Tesla production factory in Shanghai, showing workers on an assembly line. The hackers claimed that they had controlled over 200 cameras in the facility and warehouses.
The APT 69420 had access to a police station in Stoughton, Massachusetts. Besides that, the hackers had also breached the security cameras of Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Alabama; cameras of multiple locations of the luxury gym chain Equinox; surveillance footage from the ICU of Wadley Regional Medical Center, a hospital in Texarkana, Texas; and cameras at Tempe St. Luke's Hospital in Arizona.
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