AI Lets Hackers Turn Ordinary Webcams Into Wartime Spies

There are an estimated 1.2 billion internet-connected cameras in the world, filming front doors and monitoring babies. Dan Michaels, the Wall Street Journal's Brussels bureau chief, says their security is often poor, so outsiders can watch what they film and turn them into tools for wartime intelligence gathering.

Hackers first find where cameras are online. Special services on the internet, little known to average users but well known to people deep in coding or internet engineering, can reveal a camera's existence and location.

AI changed this. Instead of guessing passwords one by one, hackers now use automated systems to hunt across the web for cameras. Michaels says they then use AI to "churn through millions or even billions of passwords." The method works because many owners never change the password that came with the device.

Dutch intelligence agencies warned this summer about Russia using webcams for espionage and intelligence gathering. Michaels pointed to views of the middle of the Kerch Bridge that Russia built between Russia and occupied Crimea. He said these views from cameras "could only have come from unintended access."

Dutch agencies and others also flagged what Michaels described as "Russian hacking of cameras in Western Europe, probably to spy on assistance to Ukraine." In the United States, Michaels says, hackers sometimes want the view itself and sometimes use the camera as a gateway into other systems, such as a bank where they want financial information, "because webcam security is notoriously weak." A camera bought to watch a porch can thus open a path into everything else on the same network.