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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.

3 of 85 comments (clear)

  1. Romanian fake news! by mspohr · · Score: 3, Funny

    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?
  2. Re:The solution is to open them up by Solandri · · Score: 3, Insightful

    So you think what happened when the public tried to identify the Boston Bombers from surveillance footage is a good thing? It basically became a modern-day Salem Witch Hunt. While police corruption is certainly possible and needs to be rooted out, we've given police the task of criminal investigations precisely because we can then train a handful of investigators of these fallacies and how to avoid them, instead of having to train the entire public. It's a protective mechanism we've developed to prevent witch hunts. Opening up all cameras to the public short-circuits that protection.

    Unfortunately, our basic psychology makes us easily fall for things which sound right but are wrong. Investigators reviewing surveillance video footage have at least some training to avoid falling for the most common of those fallacies when identifying a suspect. If you throw a bunch of random untrained people from the public into that role, they'll usually end up falling for groupthink and confirmation bias leading them to the wrong conclusion. (Releasing the footage after the investigation is done via a court order or FOIA can still be done.)

  3. Re:Who cares by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

    (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.