Two Romanians Charged With Hacking Washington DC Police Surveillance Cameras Days Before Trump's Inauguration (bbc.com) 47
US prosecutors have charged two Romanians with hacking Washington DC police computers linked to surveillance cameras just days before President Donald Trump's inauguration. From a report on BBC: The pair are being held in Romania, having been arrested at Bucharest Otopeni airport on 15 December. Mihai Alexandru Isvanca, 25, and Eveline Cismaru, 28, allegedly accessed 123 outdoor surveillance cameras as part of a suspected ransomware scheme. Mr Trump was sworn in on 20 January. The US Department of Justice said the case was "of the highest priority" because of the security surrounding the presidential inauguration. The perpetrators intended to use the camera computers to send ransomware to more than 179,600 email addresses and extort money from victims, the justice department said in a statement.
Well ... (Score:2, Funny)
If they would have declared that they really wanted to interfere with the ingauguration, they would have had some sympathizers.
But as they just wanted to use those cameras for spamming & ramsomware - to Gitmo with them. Daily waterboarding please.
And they should be joining by whover's responsible of those cameras security holes.
Re: (Score:2)
If they would have declared that they really wanted to interfere with the ingauguration, they would have had some sympathizers.
But as they just wanted to use those cameras for spamming & ramsomware - to Gitmo with them. Daily waterboarding please.
And they should be joining by whover's responsible of those cameras security holes.
So torture for the sake of torture then?
Re: (Score:1)
Yes ! Send those troops to Rome to show those pizza-smelling Italians that the US cares about it's security as much as it cares about learning geography.
Re: (Score:1)
Aren't you Romanian? Don't correct him!
Re: (Score:1)
Who are you kidding? Everybody knows Romania is in Italy.
How dumb do you have to be to do this? (Score:1)
They live in a NATO country which presumably has an extradition treaty with the US and think that hacking outdoor cameras in Washington DC on inauguration day won't cause the NSA/CIA etc to trace them and US authorities to sic the local cops on them.
Then again maybe Club Fed has better food than whatever shithole in Romania they're from.
Re: (Score:2)
Actually, the food in Romania is better :) But only the food.
And they do diserve whetever's coming to them.
Re: (Score:3)
You forgot the women, mate.
And the tsuica. (diacritics won't work)
And the freedom. Believe it or not, Romania offers more freedom to the Average Joe than the USA does.
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
That's why I was talking about the freedom the Average Joe has - which is the freedom to do things Average Joes do - aka "not politics".
Like being able to drink in a bar all night long, rather than have a curfew at 2 AM.
Re: (Score:3)
They might not have realized that they were outdoor cameras in Washington DC, especially if they were building a botnet as suggested in TFS. Those cameras might just have been part of a much larger botnet.
Re: (Score:2)
Yes but given that
1) Washington, DC is politically sensitive location at the best of times
2) Inauguration Day was coming up which means extreme security and
3) The FBI/CIA/NSA etc were under enormous political pressure to find 'Russian hackers'
would it not have been prudent to exclude any IP address that geolocates there for a couple of months? Especially if you're doing it from Eastern Europe?
If you look at what happened it seemed like the Europol, the UK and the Netherlands all helped out with the investig
Re: (Score:2)
Well to be honest if I were in the ransomware business I'd probably have not targeted the US at any time. Then again the UK's not that much safer given NSA/GCHQ collaboration, and the WannaCry people did target that.
Maybe they really were North Koreans and knew they'll never set foot in a country that will extradite them.
I wonder if NSA/GCHQ have thought about some sort of firewall on NK's internet access? Or, given that they must use a foreign ISP to get to the wider Internet and that ISP could probably be
Re: (Score:2)
I think WannaCry freaked them out. It only hit XP but it hit the NHS hard
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
One of the largest agencies struck by the attack was the National Health Service hospitals in England and Scotland,[87][88] and up to 70,000 devices â" including computers, MRI scanners, blood-storage refrigerators and theatre equipment â" may have been affected.[89] On 12 May, some NHS services had to turn away non-critical emergencies, and some ambulances were diverted.[90][91] In 2016, thousands of computers in 42 separate NHS trusts in England were reported to be still running Windows XP.[35] NHS hospitals in Wales and Northern Ireland were unaffected by the attack.[92][90]
The US seems to have been rather unaffected - presumably Microsoft bullied most organisations into either upgrading from XP or paying for security patches. FedEx seems to be the only thing hit.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Then again the NSA developed the exploit it used
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
So perhaps they made sure US stuff was patched.
Still how many times have you gone into some dodgy
Re: (Score:2)
Re: Heroes. (Score:1)
I bet you've been drinking every night since the 20th January.
Re: (Score:2)
Whatever the purpose of their hack, glad that it interfered with the inauguration and likely helped protesters avoid prosecution. I'll drink to them tonight.
The black block rioted in full view of the TV cameras. Many trash cans were grievously assaulted.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
Unfortunately these were government trashcans and you don't need to assault very many of them to be over the $5000 limit you need to get a felony riot conviction in DC. Even inciting other people to do more than $5000 property damage is enough
https://beta.code.dccouncil.us... [dccouncil.us]
(d) If in the course and as a result of a riot a person suffers serious bodily harm or there is property damage in excess of $5,000, every person who willfully incited or urged others to engage in the riot shall be punished by imprisonment for not more than 10 years or a fine of not more than the amount set forth in Section 22-3571.01, or both.
So some of them are going to get ten years for felony rioting, sometime in 2018. They fought the trash ca
Re: (Score:2)
What on Earth do James O'Keefe and Roy Moore have to do with this?
It's not like anyone is disputing the fact that Black Bloc rioted on inauguration day.
E.g.
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=dc+i... [duckduckgo.com]
Re: (Score:2)
I did read the links. O'Keefe does hidden camera investigations. The fact he did one into AntiFa isn't the only evidence against them. And the charges against O'Keefe are politically motivated bullshit - his sin was exposing the lies and bias of leftist media organisations and NGOs.
Re: (Score:2)
Vindication!! (Score:2, Informative)
They hacked the cameras to show that the number of people in the crowd was much less than the great number who actually attended!
Re: (Score:1)
The media's pictures from weird angles and from 2+ miles away from the stage did just fine at that. They didn't need any help.
Re: (Score:1)
The media's pictures from weird angles and from 2+ miles away from the stage did just fine at that. They didn't need any help.
Way to ruin a joke with facts there.
Re: (Score:2)
With somebody modding you (parent) informative, rather than funny, I can't help thinking that it's time we all started filling in some of our foxholes, rather than burying ourselves any deeper.
Re: (Score:2)
With somebody modding you (parent) informative, rather than funny, I can't help thinking that it's time we all started filling in some of our foxholes, rather than burying ourselves any deeper.
I'm as bemused as you. I even hit +4 informative at one point
Re: (Score:2)
It's in TFS, the cameras were apparently part of a botnet. They might have gotten access to them with automated scripts and they might not even have realized that the cameras were outdoor in Washington DC as far as I can tell for now.
Re: (Score:2)
If someone was thinking of a fictional movie script and what to do with control of CCTV looking at and into every US gov, court building?
Get CCTV from all US federal, city and court buildings 24/7.
The face, face of passenger licence plate of every DoJ, other federal agency, state/city police officer, city investigation, court worker, state/federal funded task force member, police informant, undercover police office.
Police and security will do field intervie
So let me guess (Score:2)