When protests emerged in Tehran against the current regime, Iran came up with a way to tackle the growing anger among sections of the population, especially women who were boycotting the hijab. Authorities installed thousands of cameras across streets and in every nook and corner to ensure that people in Tehran were being tracked and any form of protest was quickly stopped. Little did they know that these cameras would become their biggest weakness.
Israel, reportedly, used these same cameras to track down Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader, and kill him. According to an AP report, traffic cameras in Tehran were hacked and the data was transferred to servers in Israel for years.
At least one camera was positioned at an angle that allowed tracking of people’s daily movements, such as where they parked their cars near Iran’s leadership compound, said a report. The visuals helped determine that Khamenei was present in the compound when it was targeted.
Experts say advances in AI have allowed militaries to overcome a critical hurdle in weaponising hacked footage: sifting through huge amounts of video to identify people, vehicles, and other targets, a task that once took teams of analysts weeks or months but can now be done in real time. With a simple keyword search, AI can scan feeds and return results almost immediately.
How did Iran fall prey to such easily hackable cameras?
This was not the first time Iran’s camera systems were compromised. In 2021, an Iranian exile group released footage exposing abuses inside Tehran’s infamous Evin prison, according to AP. A year later, another group claimed it had hacked more than 5,000 cameras across the capital, leaking gigabytes of surveillance footage and internal data on Telegram.
The risks became stark during a 12-day war in 2025, when Israel reportedly used Tehran’s camera network to track and strike a meeting of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, an attack that injured President Masoud Pezeshkian, according to Iranian lawmakers and an Israeli documentary.
“All the cameras at our intersections are in Israel’s hands,” Mahmoud Nabavian, deputy chairman of Iran’s parliamentary national security committee, said in September. “Everything on the internet is in their hands… if we move, they will know.”
There is a reason why Iran becomes a target easily to these camera hackings. For years, Iran has faced sanctions from the west, which has made it difficult for them to obtain up-to-date hardware and software. As a result, Tehran often relies on Chinese-manufactured electronics or older systems. Pirated versions of Windows and other software are also common, making the infrastructure more vulnerable to cyberattacks.
Ironically, cameras installed to enhance security are turning into tools of warfare for adversaries, doing the exact opposite of what they were meant to achieve.
Analysts estimate there are more than one billion security cameras installed worldwide—triple the number a decade ago—with hundreds of millions more added each year.
“The more people are installing cameras … the more area is being covered,” Gil Messing, chief of staff at Check Point Research, told AP. “It is very easy to use them to gain extra eyes in different places.”
