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Who Hacked The Washington D.C. Police Surveillance Cameras?
An anonymous reader quotes GIzmodo:
City officials and the Secret Service have confirmed that just days before the presidential inauguration, police surveillance cameras in Washington, DC were targeted by hackers. Reportedly, 70% of the CCTV storage devices were infected with ransomware. According to the Washington Post, "City officials said ransomware left police cameras unable to record between January 12 and January 15. The cyberattack affected 123 of 187 network video recorders in a closed-circuit TV system for public spaces across the city, the officials said late Friday."
A spokesperson for the Secret Service says despite the compromised cameras, the safety of the public or protectees was never jeopardized, and the city's CTO says they resolved the problem without paying the ransom by simply removing all software from the devices and rebooting them.
$5 says it was an employee doing something stupid on a computer inside the network.
Or, if they are not, how were they hacked?
Of course it was the Russians.
...then clearly they don't need all those cameras.
E
They must have been sorely disappointed; after all that effort of hacking the cameras, they had so few people to watch on them.
Clever way to cover your tracks. Get them to erase the DVRs and make it looks like a ransomware attack.
This is what happens when the head of cyber security knows nothing about the actual practice of the art. Not condemning the current administration, they didn't have control long enough to enable this screwup, but they're on track to let more and worse things happen in the future.
Fuck the police.
(A)
It was those fucking Russians
I just know it
It's all part of Putin's master plan
He gets his ally Trump into power through hacking, who half the country is divided against
Then he stages violence against Trump, using his Russian agents to make the Trump supporters think it's the leftist behind the violence
Then he assassinates Trump, to tie up loose ends and throw the US into civil war
All for the benefit of China, I mean Mother Russia, but Putin is secretly allied with China. Never trust the Chinese, or the Russians. Only trust in Jesus.
Also, Trump hires Russian prostitutes to pee on him. Never forget.
It was me. I did it.
the CC in CCTV means closed circuit. Clearly that's not the case here.
So they factory reset them and wiped them... No mention of closing any of the security holes that allowed them to be pwned in the first place. Enjoy the next wave of the attack.
It wasn't me.
So the answer is "a 3 letter agency did it", and their reasons for it are as nefarious as they are "classified".
These cameras are on the public internet.
There are videos showing this on youtube with some DoD contractor showing other cities their citizen spying capabilities with DC as the sample city. A number of IPs were shown for different cameras. Heard of people checking them out.
Stupid vendors. The cameras shouldn't allow access except from specific city IPs uses for management and video capture.
Stupid city govt. The contract should have penalties for being hacked. Financial penalties.
I was only interested in learning the amount of time the records were retained. Infinite was the answer. The software merges cameras, gunshot sensors, city vehicle cameras, and volunteered private webcam data together. If a gunshot goes off, they can look through all the cam footage from that area at that time.
Why are they up if the public safety is not jeopardized if the cameras go down?
"Photoshop the crowds larger, or the camera gets it. -Agent Orange"
Table-ized A.I.
Very likely an antifa sympathizer trying to make it harder for the police to capture their violent acts.
Non sequitur: Your facts are uncoordinated.
I'm amazed at what people put up with. Waste of money that was stolen from people via coercion and outright theft.
... the Russians.
In 3.. 2.. 1...
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
The images were probably useless. Surveillance camera can barely identify the race of the person committing the crime let alone anything identifiable. Have you ever seen surveillance footage that allows you to definitely identify anyone? Even camera-phones have better cameras than $1500 surveillance cameras. Thats a fact.
If the safety of the city was not compromised then why do they need the storage in the first place?
That was Shmoocon weekend... just saying...
that's all it takes to replace the software on a camera.