Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Who Hacked The Washington D.C. Police Surveillance Cameras?

Posted by EditorDavid on from the see-you-later dept.

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.

9 of 81 comments (clear)

  1. bets by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    $5 says it was an employee doing something stupid on a computer inside the network.

  2. If the publc and protectees weren't harmed... by gavron · · Score: 5, Interesting

    ...then clearly they don't need all those cameras.

    E

    1. Re:If the publc and protectees weren't harmed... by Hognoxious · · Score: 4, Funny

      You're 100% right. It's just like that day I didn't crash my car, so I don't need any of that faggoty insurance. Or when the live wire on my oven didn't come loose and touch the casing, so I didn't need all that commie earthing.

      --
      Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
    2. Re:If the publc and protectees weren't harmed... by Hognoxious · · Score: 3, Funny

      Then there was the time someone said something incredibly ridiculous and I didn't have my sarcasm meter with me so I posted what I thought was a clever put-down, but it didn't matter because it turned out he wasn't being sarcastic.

      --
      Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
  3. Wasted Effort by sunderland56 · · Score: 4, Funny

    They must have been sorely disappointed; after all that effort of hacking the cameras, they had so few people to watch on them.

    1. Re:Wasted Effort by Ogive17 · · Score: 3, Insightful

      So you're rather have a lunatic President with daddy issues and a fragile ego instead of a few stupid protesters who get out of control?

      My wife, who has a green card, is legitimately worried she might have issues getting back into the country when she has to travel internationally in a couple weeks. Trump is pissing all over the Constitution, and quite frankly, acting more like a despot instead of the leader elected somewhat democratically. He wants to punish people who question his judgement.. that's fucking scary.

      --
      "Action without philosophy is a lethal weapon; philosophy without action is worthless."
    2. Re:Wasted Effort by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

      https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/27/us/politics/refugee-muslim-executive-order-trump.html

    3. Re:Wasted Effort by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

      https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/jan/27/donald-trump-executive-order-immigration-full-text

      with unlimited access for now.

  4. fail by Patent+Lover · · Score: 4, Insightful

    the CC in CCTV means closed circuit. Clearly that's not the case here.