Hackers hit Washington spy cams

Washington : Romanian hackers took over two-thirds of Washington’s outdoor surveillance cameras just before US President Donald Trump’s inauguration, according to a federal criminal complaint unsealed Thursday.

The January attack hijacked 123 of the police department’s 187 outdoor surveillance cameras, leaving them unable to record for several days. Two Romanians, who law enforcement officials describe as part of a bigger extortionist hacking group, are being charged in US federal court with fraud and computer crimes.

“This case was of the highest priority due to its impact on the Secret Service’s protective mission and its potential effect on the security plan for the 2017 Presidential Inauguration,” a spokesman for US Attorney Jessie K. Liu said in a statement.

Alexandru Isvanca, 25, and Eveline Cismaru, 28, were arrested in Romania earlier this month, along with three other Romanian hackers who will face prosecution in Europe. The US charges, filed under seal on December 11, were first reported by
CNN.

Prosecutors plan to seek extradition for Isvanca and Cismaru soon, according to court filings. They both face up to 20 years in prison if convicted.

Isvanca remains in custody in Romania and Cismaru is on house arrest there pending further legal proceedings, the Justice Department said.

On January 12, Washington police noticed that several surveillance cameras were not functioning properly. Secret Service Agent Brian Kaiser was given access to the computers that operate the cameras, according to the court filing, and saw that they had been taken over by non-police users. Those people were sending spam messages infected with ransomware to a long list of email
addresses.

The city resolved the problem by taking the devices offline, removing all software and restarting the system at each site, a process that took about two days, according to police. From January 12 to January 15, less than a week before the January 20 inauguration, none of the cameras was able to record video. No ransom was paid.

Prosecutors allege the conspiracy began on January 9.

There is no evidence the disruption threatened or harmed anyone’s safety, according to the US Attorney’s Office.

It did, however, store two ransomware variants called “cerber” and “dharma” on police computers, the statement said.