Russia hacked Kyiv surveillance cameras to pick targets for its huge missile attack, Ukraine's security service says
- Russia hacked into surveillance cameras to coordinate its attack on Kyiv, Ukraine said.
- Ukraine's security service said Russia gained control of cameras on residential buildings.
Russia hacked into online surveillance cameras in Kyiv to coordinate a huge missile attack on the city, Ukraine's security service has said.
The Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) said in a post on Telegram that Russian intelligence had hacked two online surveillance cameras to spy on Ukraine's Defense Forces in the city and to prepare its strikes.
The SBU said it had since blocked the two cameras, which it said Russia used to spy on its air defense systems and check out where the city's critical infrastructure was located before it attacked Kyiv on Tuesday.
The attacks on the city and its surroundings killed four people and injured around 70.
Russia fired almost 100 missiles at Kyiv and the eastern city of Kharkiv, Gen. Valerii Zaluzhnyi, the commander-in-chief of Ukraine's Armed Forces, said.
Russia has been targeting Ukraine's critical infrastructure, such as its energy systems, as part of a campaign that has escalated in recent weeks.
One of the hacked cameras involved in Tuesday's attack was on the balcony of an apartment building and was used by a nearby condo to monitor the local area. The other was in a residential complex, typically used to keep tabs on a car park, the SBU said.
Russia changed the angle of the camera on the balcony and connected it to YouTube so it could see what the camera was recording, the SBU said.
The SBU asked people in Ukraine who own webcams "to stop online broadcasts from their devices" and called on the public "to report any streams from such cameras to the SBU's official chatbot."
It added that since Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Ukrainian cyber security workers had blocked around 10,000 cameras that Russia could have used to coordinate attacks.