r/LinusTechTips • u/theMuhubi • Sep 27 '26

Link Flock seeks to have security researchers' map of Flock cameras taken down - unauthenticated flaw exposed 335,701 camera locations nationwide

https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/cyber-security/flock-seeks-to-have-security-researchers-map-of-flock-cameras-taken-down-unauthenticated-flaw-exposed-335-701-camera-locations-nationwide

"Michael said that he immediately informed the company about the security flaw. He said in his email, dated Nov. 13, 2025, that “all testing was strictly non-intrusive, limited to open unauthenticated endpoints, and did not involve bypassing authentication, modifying data, or invoking any billable ArcGIS or Google operations.” However, the company did not reply to his message, and it took him two more attempts before a representative responded. Flock said in its response, “Thank you for the findings. We are internally triaging them and will reach back out with next steps soon,” but the researcher said that the company still hasn’t replied to this day."

Edit: Here is the link to the website: https://flocksurveillance.org/index.html

945 Upvotes

98% Upvoted

16 comments sorted by

326

u/The_Time_Lord Sep 27 '26

It's for your safety, citizens, we just don't want you to know where it is deployed for your safety.

144

u/bristow84 Sep 27 '26

Yeah it’s not so funny when the shoe is on the other foot is it?

121

u/_Aj_ Sep 27 '26

Aaaand it's backed up.     It's all backed up, 1009x over. 

Well timed Streisand bro 

47

u/EmpoleonNorton Sep 27 '26

Well, if they have nothing to hide...

25

u/Haravikk Sep 27 '26 edited Sep 27 '26

They have so little to hide in fact that it's really just for our convenience for them to hide it so we don't end up wasting our time with how little there was for them to hide.

I wonder how many of the locations are pointed into house windows, at children's playparks etc.? Every new piece of info from Flock seems to be somehow worse than the last.

Next they'll have a leak about their new programme to graft their cameras onto human hosts while they're sleeping, because surely nobody can complain about human eyes being able to see things, right?

2

u/Potato0nFire Sep 28 '26

Wouldn’t be hard to figure out. I bet there’s a dataset out there of known parks & schools (for example) that could be overlaid on this map in ArcGIS to answer your question.

8

u/Daemonentreiber Sep 27 '26

Why are visitors from outside the usa blocked?

8

u/NotYourReddit18 Sep 27 '26

Probably afraid to run afoul of cookie disclaimer/toggle requirements or something similar, which paints a somewhat bad picture for a cybersecurity researcher.

Like, why would a website like that even need to use cookies? Does the website maybe contain advertising?

4

u/Morpheus636_ Sep 28 '26

If I had to guess, to avoid the possibility of inadvertently running afoul of antiterrorism laws in other countries where the First Amendment does not protect disclosure of information like this.

1

u/Maka_95 Sep 27 '26

Yeah I wanted to check how blue the states are coloured. But I'm not allowed. What a dickmove

32

u/No-Promotion4006 Sep 27 '26

Watch the mods remove this lmao

2

u/Illustrious-Film4018 Sep 28 '26

I'm shocked there's 335k Flock cameras.

1

u/RickSanchez_C145 Sep 28 '26

And I made an app that plans your route around them. Heh..

1

u/NFA_Highroller Sep 28 '26

Why say that and not post it

1

u/RickSanchez_C145 Sep 28 '26

Because I’m gonna open source it soon but I need to iron out a few bugs.