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Officials in Washington D.C. have admitted that some 70 percent of the controllers for their closed-circuit television cameras were hacked in the week prior to the inauguration of President Donald Trump.
The hack saw 123 of 187 network video recorders, with each controlling up to four CCTV units, unable to record video between Jan. 12 and 15.
City officials did not disclose the type of infection, saying only that they did not pay a ransom to regain control of the devices, suggesting that it was a form of ransomware involved. What is known is that officials found two forms of “malicious software” installed on the infected devices.
According to The Washington Post, the hack appeared to be an extortion effort that ”was localized” and did not affect any criminal investigations.
City Chief Technology Officer Archana Vemulapalli told the paper that the units were restored by taking the devices offline, removing all software and restarting the system at each site. It’s unclear whether any valuable recorded data was lost when the devices were wiped. Officials claim that the malware did not spread further into the city’s computer system, begging the question as to how the devices became infected to begin with.
Although the timing of the infections is somewhat interesting, it may have been a case of coincidence, given that the use of ransomware usually results from hackers chasing payments versus any political motivations. Ransomware is malware that infects computers, denying users access to files by encrypting them, and then demanding that the victim pays a ransom payment to obtain a key to decrypt their files.
Despite not providing much information at all, officials did add that an investigation into the incident is “ongoing.”
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