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65% of Washington DC's Outdoor Surveillance Cameras Infiltrated by Romanian Hackers (thehill.com)
An anonymous reader quotes The Hill:
Two Romanian hackers stand accused of hacking more than 100 outdoor police security cameras in the D.C. area during the days leading up to President Trump's inauguration, according to a court document obtained by CNN. According to an affidavit from Secret Service agent James Graham, Mihai Alexandru Isvanca and Eveline Cismaru are accused of hacking and disabling 123 out of 187 of the city's cameras between Jan. 12 and Jan. 15... Isvanca and Cismaru are also accused in the affidavit of spreading ransomware.
In a possibly-related story, the Washington Post reports: Five Romanian hackers were arrested over the past week as part of an international investigation into computer ransomware, officials in the United States and Europe said Wednesday. In six houses across Romania, law enforcement operatives from Romania, Britain, the United States and the Netherlands seized hard drives, laptops, external storage devices and documents related to malicious software called CTB-Locker or Critroini.
In a possibly-related story, the Washington Post reports: Five Romanian hackers were arrested over the past week as part of an international investigation into computer ransomware, officials in the United States and Europe said Wednesday. In six houses across Romania, law enforcement operatives from Romania, Britain, the United States and the Netherlands seized hard drives, laptops, external storage devices and documents related to malicious software called CTB-Locker or Critroini.
It sounds like a particular model camera the city was using had an exploit. But...
Why did they bother? I can't think of what they had to gain unless they were setting up a blanket for some other activity that would be caught by those cameras. But that didn't happen but they are going to pay a pretty heavy price for it.
So was it just for the lulz? (I know that is a dated term but I can't think of a better word right now.)
I hope it will be harder for the DC government/police to get convictions against anti-Trump demonstrators. Anyone who shuts down surveillance systems does humanity a service.
I assume the DC police department is smarter than to use consumer IoT devices for spying on the public. Then again, we're talking about cops, who generally aren't the sharpest knives in the drawer. (Even management).
Thankfully -- without stupid, technically ignorant cops, there would be even less freedom left on Earth.
Ah HA!
So that's why the lamestream fake news media reported such small numbers of people at the Trump Inauguration!
There were really millions more but the Romanians erased them from the cameras.
I don't read your sig. Why are you reading mine?
Well, in the UK the Romanians have been demonised and used as a main reason to convince people to vote for Brexit.
Now it seems that in the USA the scapegoating is in full swing and, surprise, surprise, the Romanians are targeted as well.
Probably Putin frowned at the whole bruhaha about the Russian interference in the elections, so the brave Secret Service agents need a more convenient scapegoat, prefferably one wihout the Russian military behind it.
When I first read the headline, I thought it said Romulan. Like Star Trek aliens were taking over.
... is "free." because you don't have to pay to use the shit attached to it.
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
Police camera video should be viewable by the public or the cameras should be removed. The public should have exactly the same access as the police to this video.
who's gonna get convicted for not:
1. validating that they're securable, and
2. then securing them?
"I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
A few Romanians arrested, but there will be plenty more to replace them as long as the manufacturers and vendors care little about security. The only way of doing that is to make the local hight street store liable - they will then stop selling you the cheapest that they can buy; so then all that you will have to worry about are state sponsored crackers who deliberately place back doors in these things.
IoT devices are unsecure - details at 11.
Is that port 11? UDP or TCP?
Ezekiel 23:20
(posting anonymously because SJW shit)
Roma people are an ethnicity which is not endemic to Romania, although many of them are of Romanian nationality.
Less than 3 decades ago, when Roma people were marginalized in Romania, the Western Europe countries jumped and gave Romania stern warnings, so Romania said "fine, they're free to do whatever they want". So they spread out to the western countries, doing the same things they had been doing in Romania (for which they were marginalized in the first place). And NOW you want them sent back to Romania? You can have them and keep them close, 'cause that's what you wanted 25 years ago.
Signed: a Romanian non-gypsy dude who had been beaten by gypsies, had his house robbed by gypsies and his girlfriend sexually assaulted by gypsies back in 1999. Sorry if I don't love them.
I saw it on tv that same day. They had news updates on it for the next dozen hours about how the roof was still on fire because of layered new construction overtop old construction, and continued drama over whether the defense officials would need to evacuate. You want to tell me that the tv footage was faked? Burden of proof is on you. Go conspiracy youself elsewhere.
Mark of the Coder fades from you. You perform Opening on World of Warcraft. Warcraft crits GPA for 4. GPA dies.
The entire west is ruled by one world government and the borders only exist to soothe people and stop them from a reactionary backlash against globalism.
My karma was manually wiped by site staff https://slashdot.org/~slshdtisctrldbysjws 18 mod up, 10 mod down = bad karma
Does it still count as hacking if the camera comes preloaded with a telnet backdoor with login admin:123456 and publishes its IP address to several chinese dyndns servers as soon as you plug it into the internet?
Am I the only one who thinks this is super awesome? The surveillance state is incompatible with a free society and deeply unamerican. All failures for the Stasi are wins for the American people.
The "S: if for security. ;)
Signed and submitted? Oh well that's proof right there. Case closed!
What's the weather like in Langley today AC? Lol
Of course. Conspiracy theorists never want to do the actual work themselves, and they will never, ever let evidence to the contrary dissuade them of their pet theories that they want to be true so very badly.
"A 757 wasn't spotted by any civilians?"
"Actually plenty of people saw it, and you can look up their affidavits."
"Signed and submitted? Lol."
Nothing would satisfy you short of rooting around in the wreckage directly after the crash, and I'm sure you'd find some bullshit excuse for how plane parts were planted or some other nonsense.
Oh hoh! There's that conspiracy word.
Yes, that's right. The conspiracy word. We have plenty of evidence that a plane hit the Pentagon, and you have absolutely no evidence that it did not.
The plane was hijacked. We know this as a statement of fact.
The plane was tracked heading in that direction. We also know that as a statement of fact.
For the "missile/bomb" theory, the plane would have to have disappeared... completely, without a trace. The commuters who saw the plane would have had to all have been Pentagon/Military/whatever plants, or bought testimony. Some group would have had to plant the explosives or fire the missile. All of that would have had to have come from somewhere, and you'd also have to then plant all the evidence that was inside the Pentagon ruins. And all this for what purpose?
We have a photo of the plane right outside the Pentagon. Why no footage? Because when a plane is traveling 500 mph, a 24 fps camera is only going to get a frame or two before impact. This was 2001, not 2017. People didn't have dashcams, it was a good 7 years before the release of the smartphone gave most people quick available cameras on their body at any time.
You want to believe otherwise, so you concoct a grand plan that contradicts available evidence and was somehow kept secret despite the ridiculous amount of work that hard to be involved to pull off something so huge.