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How Israel used Iran's camera network as a weapon to track and kill leaders

2026-03-24 17:52:01Kosova&Bota SHKRUAR NGA REDAKSIA VOX
How Israel used Iran's camera network as a weapon to track and kill leaders
Iran built a network of cameras to monitor dissidents. Israel turned it into a weapon to track and kill leaders

Associated Press/ Israel's role in capturing Iranian street cameras in the operation to assassinate the country's supreme leader shows that surveillance systems are increasingly becoming targets of attack by enemies during wartime.

Hundreds of millions of cameras are installed above shops, in homes and on street corners around the world, many of them connected to the internet and unsecured. Recent advances in artificial intelligence have enabled militaries and intelligence agencies to analyze vast amounts of surveillance footage and identify targets.

On February 28, Israel clearly demonstrated the potential for these systems to be hacked and used against enemies, tracking Iranian leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei with the help of Tehran street cameras, despite repeated warnings that Iranian surveillance systems had been compromised, according to interviews and an Associated Press review of leaked data, public statements and news reports.

The use of hacked cameras in the operation to assassinate Khamenei was described to the AP by an intelligence official and another person briefed on the operation. Neither was authorized to speak to the media, and both shared the information on condition of anonymity.

Iran had deployed tens of thousands of cameras in its capital after waves of protests, most recently in January, when massive nationwide demonstrations ended in a bloody crackdown that left thousands of Iranians dead.

That Tehran's cameras had been compromised was no secret: the city's cameras had been hacked repeatedly since 2021, and last year a senior Iranian politician publicly warned that Israel had compromised the cameras, creating a threat to national security.

Conor Healy, director of research at the watchdog publication IPVM, said Khamenei's assassination illustrates a significant security dilemma for governments trying to suppress dissent.

“The irony is that the infrastructure that authoritarian states built to make their rule unquestionable can make their leaders more visible to those who want to eliminate them,” Healy said. “Do you trust those who are watching you?”

Warning sign

Cybersecurity experts have warned for years that cameras could be hacked for war purposes. In 2019, security engineer Paul Marrapese discovered that he could easily hack millions of cameras from his home in California.

Despite repeated warnings, the number of unsecured cameras continues to grow. A scan of unprotected cameras this year found nearly three million connections in almost every country, including nearly 2,000 cameras in Iran alone.

“There are millions and millions of these all over the world,” Marrapese said. Many of them are incredibly easy to hack: “They’re just little useless things.”

Many companies have advertised online-connected cameras accessible via mobile phones, with views that can be easily hijacked by hackers. Many cameras are installed with minimal security by untrained users, without setting passwords or installing security patches. Securing cameras requires constant attention, but hacking requires only identifying an exposed vulnerability, such as an old system or a simple password like “1234.”

Even government surveillance systems on networks closed to the internet are vulnerable: all it takes is one insider traitor to compromise them.

“The human being is the weakest link,” Marrapese said. “There are so many things you can do.”

Eyal Hulata, former national security adviser to Israel and senior fellow at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, said that Israel is under constant cyberattacks from Iran, but has so far managed to fend them off.

"There is high alert on all cyber fronts," he said.

Advances in AI and its use in warfare

The use of cameras for warfare remained a theory for years. But in 2023, Hamas hacked surveillance cameras in southern Israel ahead of the October 7 attack, allowing the group to monitor Israeli army patrols and aid in the attack. That same year, a Ukrainian official said Russia had attempted to hack cameras near missile targets, a trend that continued in 2024 and last year at border crossings.

Experts say advances in AI have allowed militaries to overcome a critical hurdle in using hacked footage as a weapon: processing vast amounts of video to identify people, vehicles and other targets. What once took teams of analysts weeks or months can now be done in real time. With a simple keyword search, AI can scan footage and provide results instantly.

“You could hack cameras before, but people had to figure out where the person was,” said cryptographer and security expert Bruce Schneier. “With AI systems… you can do a lot more automatically.”

The despot's dilemma

Iran's cameras have been hacked repeatedly in recent years. In 2021, a group of Iranian exiles circulated footage of abuses at the notorious Evin prison. In 2022, another group claimed to have hacked over 5,000 cameras around Tehran, sharing gigabytes of footage and internal data on Telegram.

During a 12-day war last summer, Israel used Tehran's cameras to track and bomb the location of a Supreme National Security Council meeting, wounding Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian.

“All the cameras at our intersections are in the hands of Israel,” said Mahmoud Nabavian, deputy chairman of the national security committee in the Iranian parliament. “Everything on the internet is in their hands… if we move, they will find out.”

The vulnerabilities have emerged as Iran has ramped up its use of cameras after a series of protests. For example, subway cameras are being used to detect when women are not wearing the mandatory veil and to identify violators through facial recognition.

But the data collected for tight control creates a tempting target for hackers, said researcher Michael Caster, who has investigated China's sales of surveillance technology to Iran.

“Bad ideators may have more access,” Caster said.

Iran, long isolated from the West, has difficulty obtaining modern hardware and software, often relying on Chinese electronics or outdated systems. Pirated versions of Windows and other software are common, making it easier for hackers to target the country.


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