City officials and the Secret Service confirmed that police surveillance cameras (CCTV) in Washington DC were targeted hackers. According to reports, 70 percent of CCTV surveillance devices were infected with ransomware.
According to the Washington Post:
City officials have reported that police cameras were infected with ransomware between 12 January and 15 January, Cyber-attack has affected 123 from 187 video recorders containing the network, a closed-circuit television system for public places across the city.
The secret service representative, Brian Ebert, said the public's safety was not compromised.
Archana Vemulapalli, the city's Chief Technology Officer, said they did not pay a ransom and plan to resolve the issue by taking the devices offline. Then they should remove the infected functional system by resetting each camera.
Vemulapalli stated that the research is ongoing and that no other computer networks in the city are believed to have been breached.
The fact that hackers used ransomware to pollute city CCTV shows that their goal was money and not access to the security system. The ransomware as you know usually locks the infected system, making it useless until the ransom is paid by the victim.
Officials report that so far two different forms of ransomware have been discovered.
The police department insists that "there was no significant impact" from the infection but for now there are limited details about the incident. They claim that the hack will not affect any criminal investigations.
Let us also mention that the investigations at the moment have not led to a suspect.
