A Hacker Wrapped A Toyota And Flock’s Cameras Couldn’t Tell It Was A Car

A 2009 Toyota Yaris wrapped in a unique vinyl design reportedly confused a Flock camera at Def Con in Las Vegas. The camera, which is designed to identify vehicles by their make, model, color, and other visible details, was unable to classify the car as a vehicle. The wrap, developed by cybersecurity researcher Bill Swearingen as part of his noRecognition project, uses AI-generated adversarial patterns to confuse computer-vision software. Swearingen claims that the wrap stopped the Flock camera from identifying the Toyota Yaris, despite the camera being able to see the car. The noRecognition project has been in development for roughly a year and has undergone around 31 million tests. The wrap is not designed to make the car invisible, but rather to prevent the camera from reliably flagging it as a vehicle. This technology is not new, as a journalist recently demonstrated a clear plate sticker that can scramble license plate reading software while remaining readable to the human eye. The combination of the wrap and the sticker could potentially make it difficult for cameras to detect and identify vehicles.