Iran built a vast camera network to control dissent. Israel turned it into a targeting tool
TEL AVIV, Israel (AP) — Israel’s role in Iran’s seizure of street cameras murder of the country’s religious leader It highlights how surveillance systems are increasingly targeted by adversaries in wartime.
Hundreds of millions of cameras have been installed in stores, in homes and on street corners around the world; Most of these are connected to the internet and have poor security. latest developments artificial intelligence It allowed militaries and intelligence agencies to identify targets by reviewing large amounts of surveillance images.
On February 28, Israel vividly demonstrated the potential of such systems to be attacked and used against enemies when it tracked down the Iranian leader. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei with the help of Tehran’s own street cameras, despite repeated warnings that Iran’s surveillance systems were compromised, according to interviews and an Associated Press review of leaked data, press releases and news reports.
An intelligence official with knowledge of the operation and another person with knowledge of the operation told the AP that hacked security cameras, among other intelligence, were used in the operation to kill Khamenei. Neither was authorized to speak to the media and both shared the information on condition of anonymity.
Iran has installed tens of thousands of cameras in its capital in response to waves of protests, most recently in January when mass demonstrations across the country resulted in a bloody crackdown. killed thousands of Iranians.
It was no secret that Tehran’s cameras were compromised: The city’s cameras were hacked repeatedly starting in 2021, and last year a senior Iranian politician publicly warned that the cameras had been compromised by Israel and posed a national security threat.
Conor Healy, research director at surveillance research publication IPVM, said Khamenei’s killing illustrated an urgent security dilemma for governments trying to suppress dissent.
“The irony is that the infrastructure that authoritarian states build to make their rule unassailable may be the very thing that makes their leaders most visible to the people who try to kill them,” Healy said. “Do you trust who is watching?”
warning signs
Cybersecurity experts have been warning for years that cameras could be hacked for war purposes.
In 2019, security engineer Paul Marrapese discovered he could easily hack millions of cameras From the comfort of his home office in California.
Despite being mentioned many times since then, the number of unprotected cameras continues to increase. This year, scanning of unprotected camera feeds has been viewed nearly three million times in nearly every country in the world, including about 2,000 cameras in Iran alone, Marrapese told the AP.
“There are millions and millions and millions of these around the world,” Marrapese said. He added that most of them are extremely easy to hack: “They’re just stupid little things. … They’re fish in a barrel.”
Companies advertised cameras that connected to the Internet, could be accessed via cell phones, and could be easily manipulated by hackers. Many are installed with minimal security by unsophisticated users who fail to set passwords or install security patches. Securing cameras requires constant vigilance, but hacking them requires identifying only a single exposed vulnerability, such as an outdated system or a generic password like “1234.”
Even surveillance systems installed by governments on networks isolated from the internet are vulnerable: It only takes an insider intervention to compromise such systems.
“People are kind of the weakest link,” Marrapese said. “There really is so much you can do.”
Eyal Hulata, Israel’s former national security advisor and a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, said Israel is constantly exposed to cyber attacks from Iran, but has been able to defend against it so far.
“There is high alert on all cyber fronts,” he said.
For years, hacking cameras for war remained theoretical. However, in 2023, Hamas hacked security cameras in southern Israel. 7 October attackAccording to Israeli media, the group is allowed to monitor Israeli army patrols and assist in the attack. That same year, a Ukrainian official told reporters that Russia was trying to hijack cameras near missile targets; This trend continued with the Russians hacking cameras in Kiev in 2024 and again last year when they hacked cameras in Kiev. Cameras at border gates were hacked.
Experts say advances in artificial intelligence are allowing militaries to overcome a critical hurdle in weaponizing hacked footage: sifting through large amounts of video to identify people, vehicles and other targets; a task that once took teams of analysts weeks or months but can now be done in real time. With a simple keyword search, AI can crawl posts and return results almost instantly.
“It used to be that you could hack cameras, but humans had to do the actual work to find out where the person was,” said cryptographer and security expert Bruce Schneier. “With AI systems… you can do so much more automatically.”
The despot’s dilemma
Iran’s cameras have been hacked numerous times in the last few years.
An Iranian exile group in 2021 Footage of abuses in Tehran’s notorious Evin prison leaked. Another group claimed this in 2022 More than 5,000 cameras hacked around TehranIt streams gigabytes of surveillance footage and internal data to a Telegram channel.
Israel used Tehran’s cameras to track and bomb the location of a meeting of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council during a 12-day war last summer, wounding Iranian President Massoud Pezeshkian, according to Iranian lawmakers. an Israeli documentary.
“All the cameras at our intersections are in Israeli hands,” said Mahmoud Nabavian, deputy chairman of the Iranian parliament’s national security committee. He told Iranian media in September. “They have everything on the internet… If we move, they’ll find out.”
Security vulnerabilities revealed Iran increases security cameras Following a series of protests that shook the country. subway camerasIt is being used to detect violators, for example, by using facial recognition to detect when women are not wearing the country’s mandatory hijab or headscarf.
But Michael Caster, a researcher who has investigated China’s sales of surveillance technology to Iran, said data collected to consolidate control presents a ripe target for hackers.
“Malicious parties can gain easier access,” Caster said.
Iran, long sanctioned by the West in particular, faces difficulties obtaining up-to-date hardware and software and relies mostly on Chinese-made electronics or outdated systems. Pirated versions of Windows and other software are common. This makes it easier for potential hackers to target the country.
The Financial Times had previously reported that cameras were used in Khamenei’s killing.
The person who spoke to the AP and received information about the operation said that almost all traffic cameras in Tehran had been hacked for years and the information was transferred to servers in Israel. At least one camera was at an angle that allowed Israel to track people’s daily movements, such as where they parked their cars near Iran’s leadership building, two people said.
The algorithms helped provide information such as people’s addresses, the routes they took to work and who was protecting them, according to the person briefed on the operation. The same person said that the attack had been planned for months, but the operation was accelerated after it was determined that Khamenei and his senior officials would be at the leadership building that morning.
The Israeli prime minister’s office did not respond to a request for comment.
Col. Amit Assa, a former official at Israel’s Shin Bet internal security agency, said such operations are supported by many intelligence sources, such as undercover agents and secret conversations.
But Assa says cameras play an important role because they allow intelligence officers to identify individuals and provide important confirmation in deciding whether to launch an attack.
When you see a person’s face on the screen in the command center, he said, “putting your finger, as we say, on the yellow button” helps you make a decision.
More cameras, more coverage
Cyber threat intelligence group Check Point Research says: Hacking attacks on Iranian cameras increased With increased activity in Israel and Gulf countries such as Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates since the beginning of the war.
Such hacks could help Iran track targets and assess damage after missile strikes, according to Gil Messing, chief of staff at Check Point Research.
“The more people set up cameras, the more area those cameras cover,” Messing said. “It is very easy to use to add extra eyes to different places.”
Analysts estimate that more than one billion security cameras are installed worldwide; this number is tripling compared to a decade ago. Hundreds of millions more are installed every year.
Muhanad Seloom, an assistant professor of security studies at the Doha Institute of Graduate Studies, said oil-rich Gulf states such as Qatar have long known that their oil facilities could be targeted in a war and their systems are heavily secured. But only recently did authorities in the region realize that street cameras could also be used as weapons.
“I don’t think anyone predicted these traffic cameras would turn into targeting tools… there are alerts everywhere,” Seloom said. “How did it happen that the entire leadership of Iran was decapitated on the first day?… This is a matter of debate.”
Governments across the region are on high alert.
Gulf monarchies ban residents from filming or livestreaming images of Iranian attacks; The UAE arrested dozens of people for sharing video of the clash online. While partly aimed at protecting the country’s reputation, Seloom said the bans were also motivated by concerns that such images could be exploited by Iran’s military.
Earlier this month, Israel’s National Cyber Directorate Warned hundreds of camera owners It was targeted by Iran, which urged the public to change passwords and update software to prevent attacks.
Although hacking has long been a concern in the Middle East, its increased use since the start of the war is “a wake-up call,” said Ali Vaez, Iran project director at the International Crisis Group.
Still, he said there’s a lot that can be done to fix the vulnerabilities.
“This is pure whack-a-mole,” Vaez said.
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Kang reported from Beijing.
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Contact AP’s global investigative team at Investigative@ap.org or https://www.ap.org/tips/.
