Hackers removed a Flock camera from a roadside, extracted a near-complete copy of its internal data, and shared the files with 404 Media and WIRED. The breach exposes exactly how the system tracks cars and people. The group behind the theft, calling themselves stegan0gram, also published details on how they accessed the software, hoping others might follow their lead.
While Flock Safety claims its devices rely on on-device encryption, the attackers recovered the storage and an encryption key stored directly on the hardware. This unlocked thousands of vehicle detection videos. The group passed the material to 404 Media and the transparency nonprofit Distributed Denial of Secrets. That organisation then shared the data with WIRED. The two outlets subsequently analysed the files as part of a joint investigation.
Most of the automatic license plate reader’s (ALPR) sensitive storage remained encrypted and inaccessible. However, the recovered data shows the software explicitly detects people alongside vehicles, license plates, and bicycles. The device can produce dozens of images of a single passing car. Logs recovered over several weeks indicate the system generated more than a million images. The computer-vision software also isolated bumper stickers and other graphics. In one instance, it flagged an American flag patch on a motorcyclist’s saddlebag.
Removing the camera to dump its software suggests some individuals are not satisfied with merely destroying or taking down the devices. Across the country, multiple arrests have occurred for alleged tampering or sabotage of Flock’s cameras. In response, some towns have announced they will stop using the equipment entirely. In one case, a police department created a fake, 3D-printed Flock camera case to bait potential vandals.
The mechanics of the theft
“Why just destroy them when we can reverse engineer them and find the secrets of those spying on us?” one hacker from the stegan0gram collective said in an interview. “We liberated hardware in the field, disarmed them, and proceeded with reverse engineering of the cameras and associated solar equipment.”
Flock’s cameras photograph passing vehicles and send the images and other data to the company’s servers. There, the system reads the license plate and identifies characteristics such as the vehicle’s colour, make, and model. Flock then makes these timestamped records searchable by the local agency owning the cameras. In many cases, the system allows other police departments nationwide to search those cameras as part of the company’s national network.
In Alpharetta, Georgia, WIRED found records from the city’s Flock cameras were accessible to more than 2,000 agencies. These included police departments, colleges, airports, and the Office of Inspector General for the federal General Services Administration.
This national network has been a selling point for Flock but also a deep source of controversy. 404 Media revealed local cops were performing lookups in the national network on behalf of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). This included searches in areas that banned working with immigration authorities or transferring license plate data out of state. 404 Media also revealed a Texas cop searched Flock cameras nationwide for a woman who self-administered an abortion. Those stories triggered a national conversation about whether communities want Flock cameras, or ALPRs generally, in their neighbourhoods.
In the case of stegan0gram, the answer is clearly no.
The hackers said they accessed the Android system on the camera and found two partitions, essentially sections of the hard drive. A few were unencrypted, including one called “vendor” and another called “media.” The latter contained an encryption key that unlocked another part holding much of the media, such as videos and stills.
In early 2025, security researcher Jon “GainSec” Gaines reverse engineered a Flock license-plate reader and documented flaws that could be used to gain root-level access. After Gaines disclosed his findings, the company acknowledged them but downplayed their severity. Flock wrote that the flaws required physical access to the device and that even someone who gained access to a camera would still not be able to gain access to footage because images remained on the device only briefly after being transmitted to the cloud.
404 Media and WIRED analysed the camera’s contents. The device’s processor is similar to those used in midrange smartphones. It runs about 20 Flock-built apps that handle everything from detecting motion and taking pictures to classifying objects, uploading data, and receiving remote updates.
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 useful frames, and 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, and colour. That appears to happen on Flock’s servers.
According to our analysis, the camera’s logs recorded about 21 days of activity across several periods. During those windows, the device photographed roughly 50,200 vehicles and generated about 1.6 million images. On a typical day, it logged around 3,300 vehicles, with a high of 4,454. Those figures would vary considerably depending on where a camera is installed and how much traffic passes in front of it. The camera was almost certainly operating outside those periods, but older logs had been overwritten or were no longer recoverable from the device.
The software running on the camera explicitly detects people, something which is typically overlooked in discussions around Flock cameras. When it spots a person, it records where they appear in the image and how confident it is in the detection.
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. WIRED then ran them across 27,321 short video clips stored on the camera. The clips were mp4 files, each about one to two seconds long, recorded at 1024 by 768 pixels without audio. They were separate from the rapid bursts of higher-resolution still images the camera also takes as vehicles pass. The models detected people in 11 of the clips, all of them riding motorcycles. The small number is likely due to the camera’s position above a roadway, pointed down at passing traffic where pedestrians were unlikely to appear.
The tests 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 detector cropped an American flag patch on the rider’s saddlebag as if it were a plate.
Flock insists its cameras do not perform face recognition. WIRED and 404 Media found no evidence of any face-recognition capabilities in the camera’s software beyond ones included by default in the Android operating system. Those capabilities did not appear to be enabled or in active use.
In August, WIRED obtained front-end code for Flock’s police software, now called OS Investigate and previously known as Nightshift, and reconstructed portions of the tool. That software showed how Flock can use the records generated by its cameras, along with police files and commercial data, to identify drivers, surface vehicles that repeatedly travel together, and search for people based on patterns of movement. The data provides a view of the other end of a system.
A Flock spokesperson said in a statement: “The unauthorized removal and tampering of a Flock camera is illegal.” When asked specifically about the encryption key stored on the camera, the company did not provide further comment in the available record.
What it means
The breach confirms that the “on-device” encryption Flock advertises is not a complete barrier. Attackers can physically remove the unit, extract a key file, and unlock the stored media. This means the data is not safe from determined individuals with physical access. The revelation that the system actively tracks people, not just cars, adds another layer of scrutiny to how these devices are deployed in public spaces.
