Verkada surveillance cameras at Tesla supplier, hundreds more businesses breached

Swiss software developer Tillie Kottmann, who has gained attention for finding security flaws in mobile apps and other systems, shared with Reutersrecordings from inside a Tesla supplier's production site in China.

Additional footage came from an Alabama jail, hospital rooms, a police interview area and a community gym.

Kottmann declined to identify other members of the group.

The hackers sought to draw attention to the pervasive monitoring of people after having found login information for Verkada's administrative tools publicly online this week, Kottmann said.

Verkada acknowledged an intrusion, saying it had disabled all internal administrator accounts to prevent unauthorised access.

"Our internal security team and external security firm are investigating the scale and scope of this issue, and we have notified law enforcement" and customers, the company said.

Kottmann said Verkada cut off the hackers' access hours before Bloombergfirst reported the breach.

The hacking group, if it had chosen, could have used its control of the camera gear to access other parts of company networks at Tesla and software makers Cloudflare and Okta, according to Kottmann.

In a statement to Reuters, Tesla China said the hacking incident only involved one of its suppliers’ production sites in China’s Henan province and neither its Shanghai car factory nor showrooms were affected.

It also said data from the supplier’s factory was stored locally and there was no security risk mentioned in the hacking incident.

It has stopped the cameras in the supplier’s factory from working or linking to the internet.

Cloudflare said its security measures are designed to block a small leak from becoming a wider intrusion, and that no customer data were affected.

Okta said it was continuing to investigate but that its service was not affected.

A list of Verkada user accounts provided by the hacking group and seen by Reutersincludes thousands of organisations, including gym chain Bay Club and transportation technology startup Virgin Hyperloop.

Reuterscould not independently verify the authenticity of the list or screenshots distributed by Kottmann, but they included detailed data and matched other materials from Verkada.

Madison County Jail in Alabama, Bay Club and Virgin Hyperloop did not respond to requests for comment.

Verkada says on its website it has over 5200 customers, including cities, colleges and hotels. Its cameras have proved popular because they pair with software to search for specific people or items.

Users can access feeds remotely through the cloud.

In a 2018 interview withReuters, chief executive Filip Kaliszan said Verkada had deliberately made it easy for many users at an organisation to watch live video feeds and securely share them, such as with emergency responders.

Verkada has raised US$139 million (A$181 million) in venture capital, with the latest financing announced a year ago valuing the Silicon Valley startup at US$1.6 billion.

Verkada drew scrutiny last year after Vice reported that some employees had used company cameras and its facial recognition technology to take and share photos of female colleagues.

Kaliszan later described the behavior as "egregious" and said three people had been fired over the incident.