FTC sought to probe Flock Safety’s cybersecurity protections

TechCrunch reports that the Federal Trade Commission has been urged by Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., and Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi, D-Ill., to investigate police surveillance technology firm Flock Safety, claiming that the company had failed to put in place basic cybersecurity protections for its license plate-scanning camera network.

Multi-factor authentication was confirmed to not have been required by Flock for its law enforcement users, according to Wyden and Krishnamoorthi, who warned that stolen police credentials could be used to access billions of photos of license plates captured across the country.

Flock, which manages one of the nation's largest license plate reader system networks in the U.S., already had certain police logins stolen and shared online, said the lawmakers, who cited data from cybersecurity firm Hudson Rock. Researcher Benn Jordan also found Flock credentials for sale on a Russian forum. Flock's legal officer Dan Haley said MFA is now enabled by default, with 97% of law enforcement users adopting it.