Ukraine’s intelligence agency this week asked civilians to remove any outdoor webcams recording or livestreaming scenes from Ukraine, warning that Russia was exploiting the cameras to help guide attacks. its missile attack in real time.
The Ukrainian intelligence agency, known as the SBU, said it was primarily concerned with “automatic video recording around residential and social buildings, roads and transport, industrial and commercial facilities. “
Cybersecurity experts have warned for years that webcams, including security cameras for homes and businesses, are often vulnerable to hacking. Access to such footage, whether it is hacked or in a public livestream, could help Moscow identify targets, the SBU said.
Most of Ukraine banned the filming and distribution of footage of its armed forces shortly after Russia’s invasion last year, citing concerns about revealing military information, including troop positions.
It is not clear what motivated the SBU public warning about street webcams more than a year later, but its demand for civilians to remove them comes as Ukraine’s capital has faced relentless missile attacks in recent weeks that have forced the its air defense systems into overdrive.
The morning after one of the largest aerial assaults, the SBU detained six Kyiv residents who shared footage showing Russian missiles being intercepted. US officials said the May 16 attack damaged the highly sophisticated American-made Patriot air defense system.
The footage may have revealed the locations of Ukraine’s air defense systems, the SBU said, adding that “within minutes, these videos were picked up by many Telegram channels and Russian propaganda internet communities,” including controlled by Russian intelligence.
Similar footage was also captured by webcams of “commercial entities” in the area and posted on YouTube by other users, the SBU added, saying it had blocked some of those cameras from functioning. .
Ukraine’s IT Army, a pro-Kyiv group of hackers, launched “cam bounty,” asking people to report weak webcams across the country and promising to block them. The group said it received more than 300 messages about such cameras in two days.
The new request from the SBU is “fully warranted,” said Robert Lipovsky, a principal threat intelligence researcher at ESET, a cybersecurity firm that has helped Ukraine investigate Russian cyberattacks. Many internet-connected devices, such as smart home hubs, lack adequate security protection, ESET found, but webcams can be particularly exploitable. Cautions about the security and privacy risks they pose would be appropriate even in peacetime, Mr. Lipovsky said.
The cybersecurity director of the United States’ National Security Agency, Rob Joyce, warned in April that Russian hackers are tapping coffee shop security cameras and other public-facing webcams in Ukraine to gather intelligence on nearby aid convoys.
Monitoring such cameras does not necessarily require hacking. Many websites make collections of unsecured video feeds from around the world easily accessible, and platforms like YouTube often host livestreams of cityscapes.
Live video streams provided some strategic value to Ukraine at the start of the war — webcams broadcasting scenes from Kyiv’s Independence Square and sharing young adults everyday life under attack on TikTok Live played a novel role in drawing the world’s attention to Russia’s actions.
Cameras across the country have also documented atrocities committed by Russian forces, and the Ukrainian government has developed digital tools to allow civilians to easily record and submit evidence of war crimes. A New York Times investigation that identified the Russian military unit behind the Bucha massacre relied in part on footage from security cameras along Yablunska Street, the quiet suburban road where the bodies of the twelve dozen civilians.
However, military doctrine almost always prompts governments to try to control what information is recorded and shared during wartime, said Stéphane Duguin, the CEO of the CyberPeace Institute, which tracks cybersecurity threats during wartime. .
“If it’s hyper-connected,” he added, “it creates a risk.”
