Metropolitan Police Department Exposed
While maybe not one of the biggest attacks of the year, the hacking of Washington, D.C.’s Metropolitan Police Department was certainly one of the most dramatic incidents in recent memory—and showed a new willingness by ransomware gangs to target law enforcement agencies with increasingly dangerous tactics. The ransomware gang Babuk attacked MPD in April, making off with 250 gigabytes of sensitive internal data—including disciplinary files on past and current police officers, intelligence on local protest activity, and, most alarmingly, information on informants embedded in criminal networks scattered throughout the city. The hackers then threatened to leak the data if their demands of a $4 million ransom were not met. Cops were so distressed they offered to pay $100,000 for the files, though the hackers declined—and subsequently dumped everything online.
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