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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.

5 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."
  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.

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

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