Two people have been arrested in relation to the hacking of Washington D.C.’s closed-circuit television camera network that resulted in 70 percent of the network going offline in the week before the inauguration of President Donald Trump.

The two suspects, identified only as a 50-year-old British man and a Swedish woman of the same age, were arrested south of London in the United Kingdom Jan. 19. The arrests were undertaken by Britain’s National Crime Authority, acting on a request from the U.S. government.

According to Washington D.C. officials, the hack took 123 of 187 network video recorders that control up to four CCTV units each offline Jan. 12 to 15. The form of attack was never officially confirmed. But given that authorities said they did not pay a ransom, it is presumed that the two accused deployed ransomware and were attempting to gain a ransom payment from city officials.

At the time, reports claimed that the timing of the infections a week before the presidential inauguration may have been a case of coincidence, given that the use of ransomware usually results from hackers chasing payments rather than political motivations. But The Telegraph claims that “the first cyber attack could have been a dry run with another potentially planned during the presidential handover.”

Although there is reported to have been some 28,000 law enforcement personnel on hand at the inauguration along with 900 Secret Service agents, as Sputnik rightly points out “an Inauguration Day CCTV blackout of that magnitude would have thrown the security detail into disarray.”

The two accused have been released on bail until April. The NCA said only that “inquiries are ongoing and we are unable to provide further information at this time.”

Image: Pixabay/Public Domain CC0.