London police have arrested two British nationals for hacking Washington DC’s CCTV Network between January 12th – January 15th,2017. As per our sources, these two hackers are suspected to be the kingpins behind the cyber attack which brought down the entire public CCTV network in Washington DC for two full days.
The Sun reported that a team of investigators was pressed into service by Washington DC’s Police Department after the CCTV network crippled just a few days before the new US President Donald Trump took the office on January 20th,2017.
Out of 187 cameras in the network, 123 cameras installed at choke points were taken down by the suspected criminals by inducing ransomware into the surveillance storage devices.
Law enforcement forces detected that the hack and concluded that it was conducted from an IP Address based in London. Soon, two officials from the United States flew down to London and took a pair of British Nationals into custody on January 19th,2016.
According to a news report published in The SUN, a 50-year-old British man and a Swedish woman, also 50, were detained by the National Crime Agency (NCA). The pair were holding a passport as British Nationals, but are suspected to be refugees from South Africa.
An NCA spokesperson said that the couple managed to infect 70% of the storage devices recording video evidence with ransomware. But officials managed to do a clean up before the new US president took the oath on January 20th,2017.
The couple is yet to reveal the motive behind the hack. But officials say that there is no evidence against them which proves them as individuals acting under the influence of state-sponsored actors.
A source from National Crime Agency said that investigation is still going on and till then the accused will be in the custody.
But on January 21st,2017, the British Couple were granted a bail till April 2017.
