Two Romanians Charged With Hacking Police CCTV Cameras Before Trump Inauguration
Two Romanian nationals were behind the attack that hacked into 70% of the computers that control Washington DC Metropolitan Police Department’s surveillance camera network in January this year, CNN reports.
According to the criminal complaint unsealed in Washington, the pair hacked 123 of the Metropolitan Police Department’s 187 outdoor surveillance cameras used to monitor public areas in D.C. by infecting computers with ransomware in an effort to extort money.
Instead of fulfilling ransom demands, the DC police department took the storage devices offline, removed the infection and rebooted the systems across the city, ensuring that the surveillance camera system was secure and fully operational.