Two Romanian nationals were charged Thursday with hacking more than 100 police department computers and surveillance cameras in Washington, D.C., days before President Donald Trump’s inauguration.
The cameras were re-secured and police operations were not affected by the hacking before the presidential event, investigators said, CBS News reported.
Mihai Alexandru Isvanca, 25, and Eveline Cismaru, 28, were arrested Dec. 15 at an airport in Bucharest, Romania. The suspects have been charged with conspiracy to commit wire fraud and conspiracy to commit computer fraud, the criminal complaint stated.
They remain in custody in Romania until further legal proceedings, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia. Isvanca is in police custody and Cismaru is under house arrest.
Spam emails sent malicious software to Metropolitan Police Department computers, which operate 123 of the city’s 187 surveillance cameras, a Secret Service agent wrote in a complaint.
The suspects also allegedly spread spam using the hacked computers with an attempt to distribute ransomware to some 179,000 email addresses.
It is not known if the suspects succeeded in getting victims to open the infected emails, the New York Daily News reported. Emails between the two of them indicated transferring information on thousands of credit cards.
Money may have been the motive for the hackers rather than access to the cameras because of the attempt at ransomware, although the complaint did not specify.
Officials say public safety was never threatened and the hack did not involve the city’s entire computer system. All malicious software was removed from the cameras.
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