A new form of online exploitation has emerged, with intimate and private moments stolen from surveillance cameras worldwide being offered for sale. This follows previous trends of non-consensually shared explicit content. The footage, captured without consent from hotels, bedrooms, changing rooms, medical offices, and wellness centers, is available on an easily accessible portal.
The site was discovered by Yarix, a Treviso-based cybersecurity firm and a competence center for Var Group of Empoli (Florence). It hosts thousands of illicitly obtained audiovisual recordings from over 2,000 compromised surveillance systems. Yarix reported its findings via the Venice Operational Center for Cybersecurity (Cosc) to the Venetian Postal Police, with whom it has had a cooperation agreement since 2016.
The company’s Cyber Threat Intelligence team is monitoring the portal and conducting further analysis for the investigation. Active since at least December 2024, the site allows users to view short clips for free before offering paid access to the live camera feed or even control of the device itself. An analysis of the cameras’ unique network IDs confirmed the recordings originate from various countries, including France, Germany, Russia, Ukraine, Mexico, and Argentina. Approximately 150 videos have been identified from Italy so far.
The portal operates on a pay-per-view model, with prices ranging from approximately $20 to $575 per video based on popularity and view count; some videos have been viewed over 20,000 times. Notably, the site is part of the “clear web,” meaning it is easily found through standard search engines.
The content includes thousands of intimate and explicitly pornographic recordings. Access to one or multiple cameras is sold via a dedicated bot on the Telegram messaging app. Users can explore content through a search bar using specific digital tags.
The portal’s domain is registered in Tonga, a South Pacific nation using the “.to” suffix—a choice likely made for the anonymity it affords the operator and due to lax legal requirements for domain registration and limited international legal cooperation agreements.
In a section labeled “About,” the site’s owners claim a quasi-civil motive, stating their goal is to “draw public attention to the problem of personal data leaks caused by imperfections in hardware and software.” However, the fact remains that the images are for sale and do not depict “neutral” environments like stores or public spaces where surveillance is used for security. Investigators are also working to determine if all content comes from hidden cameras and unwitting victims, and cannot rule out that some recordings may feature porn actors to attract more users and paid subscriptions.
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