South Koreans have long been wary of hidden cameras in public toilets, subway stations and motel rooms. That fear increasingly extends to the cameras in their own homes.
Four people were arrested over the hacking of 120,000 home security cameras in South Korea, whose footage was used to make sexually exploitative material, the National Police Agency said on Monday.
It was the latest turn in South Korea’s decadelong battle against the illicit electronic spying that officials say has compromised countless devices that people use in daily life.
The footage came from internet-connected cameras that were installed in homes, businesses, hospitals, saunas and other spaces, commonly to monitor children or pets. One of the people arrested made about $12,000 by selling the footage to a foreign website that shares illegal content, and another made twice as much, the police said in a statement.
The hackers, who did not work together, were able to infiltrate the devices easily because they used vulnerable passwords with features like repeated characters or sequential numbers, the police said.
Such security cameras are used worldwide, and many have vulnerabilities. The U.S. Federal Trade Commission fined a security camera firm, Verkada, about $3 million last year after a hacker breached nearly 150,000 cameras inside hospitals, prison cells and rooms with children.
Videos stolen from tens of thousands of security cameras in China were sold on social media. Groups backed by Iran have tried to spy on Israel through private security cameras, prompting the Israeli authorities to issue guidance for residents to change passwords and install software updates.
For more than a decade, South Korea has grappled with hidden cameras being used to make sexually explicit videos, mostly of young women. From 2011 to 2022, the police made nearly 50,000 arrests over the use of cameras to create sexually explicit material.
Some of the earliest news reports that sexually explicit material was being extracted from security cameras were in 2017, said Hakkyong Kim, a professor of police science at Sungshin Women’s University in Seoul.
“It’s not a new crime,” he said, “and the damage will only get worse.”
The suspects in the case announced on Monday were charged with violating laws against hacking, the head of the National Police Agency’s Cyber Terror Investigation Unit, Kim Young-woon, said in an interview. Three suspects, who remain in custody, face additional charges of creating or selling sexually exploitative material, some involving children, he said. The fourth suspect was released after being arrested.
The number is victims is anyone’s guess, Mr. Kim said, adding that the website where the illicit videos were shared was also under investigation.
The authorities did not disclose the origin of the cameras that had been hacked, or their manufacturers.
Last year, South Korea’s Science Ministry, communications authorities and National Police Agency said that many of the videos extracted from home cameras had been shared on Chinese sites. The ministry said that products ordered directly from overseas, many from China, were likely to have security flaws because they don’t meet local regulations.
The Science Ministry said on Tuesday that it was reviewing proposed regulatory changes that would block home cameras from working unless the user sets a complex username and password.
“If a camera doesn’t require the user to change the password, it’s a fundamental flaw in the product,” said Sangjin Lee, a cybersecurity professor at Korea University in Seoul. He added users often leave in place the default password when they purchase a new device, even though it could be dangerously simple for a hacker to guess.
John Yoon is a Times reporter based in Seoul who covers breaking and trending news.
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