Swiss authorities on March 12 raided the apartment of a hacker who claimed credit for breaching San Mateo, Calif.-based security camera company Verkada and accessing its live feeds of 150,000 surveillance cameras from hospitals and other companies, Bloomberg reports.
Tillie Kottmann said their apartment in Lucerne, Switzerland, was raided and that police took their electronic devices. The warrant was based on an alleged hack in 2020 and not the recent breach of Verkada, which exposed live video surveillance feeds from hospitals including Daytona Beach, Fla.-based Halifax Health, Texarkana, Texas-based Wadley Regional Medical Center and Tempe (Ariz.) St. Luke's Hospital, according to Bloomberg.
Tillie Kottmann told Bloomberg that they hacked Verkada because they were inspired by "lots of curiosity, fighting for freedom of information and against intellectual property, a huge dose of anti-capitalism, a hint of anarchism — and it's also just too much fun not to do it."
The recent search of the hacker's apartment was part of a U.S. criminal case against Tillie Kottmann in the Western District of Washington. The hacker has been accused of unauthorized access to protected computers, identity theft and fraud.