UNITED STATES OF AMERICA – 16.09.2026
Hackers ripped open Flock camera above a roadway made a near complete copy of the data and stored inside and shared the files with 404 Media and Wired. And the hackers say they're also publishing details on how they managed to obtain the software in hopes that other people may copy them.
The hackers were able to copy the camera storage and recover an encryption key stored on the device, which unlocked videos of thousands of vehicle detections. While much of the ALPR's most sensitive storage remained encrypted and inaccessible, the joint analysis of the recovered data shows that software running on the device explicitly detects people as well as vehicles license plates and bicycles.
404 and wired analysed the camera's content and found the device processor is similar to those used in mid-range smartphones. According to the code, when something moves into view the camera takes a rapid series of photos. A typical passing vehicle generated about 28 images, though some produced more than 100. The camera uses different exposures to capture both the license plate and the wider scene, then scans the images, selects and crops the useful frames, and then sends them with other data to Flock over the cellular network. The camera itself does not appear to read the plate or identify the vehicle's make, model, or colour. That appears to happen on Flock servers.
To test what the software could actually see, Wired extracted the models from the camera's files and ran them against test images and footage recovered from the device. The models readily detected people, including a selfie of a reporter. The test also showed how broadly the camera's plate detector could interpret what it saw. In some cases, it mistook bumper stickers, dealership frames, and other graphics for license plates and cropped them out as if they were plates. In one video of a passing motorcycle, the detection cropped a patch on the rider's saddlebag as if it were a plate.
The camera's logs also showed that the camera is struggling with storage. Its logs recorded more than 27,000 quote no space left on device errors while trying to save full resolution images along with tens of thousands of related errors, crashes, and reboots. At the same time, about every 2 minutes, code checked that the camera was still running and logged the message quote who's a good boy. More than 12,000 of those messages appear on the recovered logs. When the camera did restart, another service left a final message in the logs quote a reboot was requested.