Stolen Flock camera yielded 1.6 million images
By ยท Updated 28 Sep 2026
25 September 2026. [AI first draft. Verify every fact against the source before publishing.]
A stolen Flock Safety license-plate camera was reverse-engineered by hackers, who recovered approximately 1.6 million images from the device's storage, according to reporting from WIRED. The recovered data covered about 21 days of activity, including 50,200 vehicle records and 27,000 short video clips. Hackers accessed both encrypted and unencrypted portions of the camera's storage after physically removing the device from a roadway and extracting an encryption key stored on the hardware.
Jason Brown, a former Secret Service cybercrime expert now serving as director of customer advisory at threat intelligence firm iCOUNTER, emphasized that the incident did not constitute a breach of Flock's broader cloud network. Brown stated that physical access to a stolen device is fundamentally different from compromising cloud infrastructure where law enforcement users access collected images. Flock previously disclosed a separate security issue in which some cameras became temporarily accessible over the internet due to weak authentication controls; Brown noted that issue was addressed. Flock reports approximately 97 percent of law enforcement agencies using the system now have multifactor authentication enabled.
Flock Safety told FOX Business that unauthorized removal and tampering of its cameras is illegal and that the company maintains a public Vulnerability Disclosure Policy for security researchers. The company stated it received no report through that process regarding this incident. Brown characterized both the stolen camera and the earlier authentication issue as isolated events rather than indicators of a systemic problem with Flock's security architecture.
Residents can verify their community's specific contracts, deployment timelines, and any publicly disclosed security incidents through municipal records requests and law enforcement agency procurement documents.
Read the original reporting: Fox Business.