It is bad.
But think the real danger in Flock is the aggregate data, tracking between camaras. So if someone hacks a single camara, they probably don't get much, unless it is pointed right at someone, which is bad. Aren't they selling these as should be pointing at traffic? If they are pointing right at people, like at playgrounds, then they are being installed illegally to begin with ?
A network connected device that can be hacked is a small step away from being the first foothold into its server. The fact that on-device security is this atrocious suggests that their server is not any better quality, which means hacking it would probably not take much effort.
I don't disagree.
But there is some old rule about, even the best security can fail if the device is physically accessible.
There are levels to defending against physical attacks, and Flock half-assed theirs by leaving the encryption key right on the file system, according to the reporting. Those more serious about security — like Apple — store keys in an "enclave" chip so it can't be easily extracted by an attacker doing the bare minimum
Apple did that… eventually. Early iPhones weren’t very secure. Apple only got serious after they dominated the market and reducing the theft value of iPhones became a priority.
Even the cheapest commodity encryption chips have had this capability for well over a decade now, Unlike Apple, Flock are not a hardware pioneer, not by a long shot.
The Android documentation has an example of how to use hardware keys, and a Chinese OEM (IIRC) was found using the example key provided by Android sample code - and yet that was more effort than Flock applied, since their ARM SoC support it.
A Silcon Valley startup with poor server-side security? Couldn't be!
i think this is actually good, because there are differences between the images they found, and security settings that the company claimed.
They had not admitted before to tracking people, but their software is clearly submitting them. They had not admitted before to looking at bumper stickers, but turns out they do.
I wonder if they could find all cars with Bernie Sanders bumper stickers within X blocks of a polling place.. I can imagine that (or similar queries) might be very useful in the wrong hands.