APR 27, 8:09 AM

‘Cyberpunks’ Allegedly Steal Large Amounts Of D.C. Police Data In Ransomware Attack

Martin Austermuhle https://twitter.com/maustermuhle

The data allegedly stolen from D.C. police computers by hackers includes officers’ disciplinary records and information on criminal suspects.

Tony Hisgett / Flickr

More than 250 gigabytes of data from D.C. police computers was allegedly stolen by foreign hackers who have threatened to make the data public unless they receive a ransom payment.

Screenshots of the available data — including officer disciplinary files, images and other identifying information of criminal suspects, intelligence on gangs and crews in different parts of D.C., and more — appeared this week on a website linked to Babuk, a self-identified group of “cyberpunks” that has recently been accused of stealing data from private companies and demanding payment lest it be published online.

“Hello! Even an institution such as DC can be threatened, we have downloaded a sufficient amount of information from your internal networks, and we advise you to contact us as soon as possible, to prevent leakage, if no response is received within 3 days, we will start to contact gangs in order to drain the informants, we will continue to attack the state sector of the usa, fbi csa, we find 0 day before you, even larger attacks await you soon,” said a message on the group’s website on the dark web.

In a brief statement, the Metropolitan Police Department said it was aware of the possible theft of data.

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