Swiss authorities raid home of alleged surveillance camera hacker

Swiss law enforcement raided the home of a hacker potentially responsible for breaching around 150,000 surveillance cameras, exposing sensitive footage from homes, hospitals and prisons.

A spokesperson for Switzerland’s Federal Office of Justice told The Hill on Monday that police in Lucerne, Switzerland, carried out a home search Friday at the request of the U.S. government on a residence connected to the hacker who claimed credit for the breach, declining to name those involved.

The Associated Press reported that the house belonged to a hacker known as Tillie Kottmann, and that electronics were taken from the home as part of the raid. The FBI told the publication that it was “aware of law enforcement activity carried out in Switzerland,” but had no further comment.

The raid comes a week after Bloomberg News first reported that hackers had breached security camera data from tech group Verkada, allowing access to video archives of all Verkada customers, including Tesla, Cloudflare, psychiatric hospitals, women’s clinics, schools and private residences.