The Metropolitan Police Department (also known as the Washington, DC Police Department or MPD) has confirmed that it was hacked after the Babuk ransomware leaked screenshots of stolen data. The Metropolitan Police Department is the primary law enforcement agency in Washington, DC.
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In a statement to BleepingComputer, the police department said it was aware that a server had been compromised, and that the FBI was currently investigating the matter. Specifically, the Metropolitan Police Department said: “We are aware that unauthorized access was made to our server. While we determine the full impact and continue to monitor the activity, we have reached out to the FBI to fully investigate this matter.”
The Washington, D.C. Police Department made this statement after the Babuk Locker gang said it had breached the police department's networks and stolen 250 GB of unencrypted files.
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As part of this breach, the ransomware gang published screenshots of various folders allegedly stolen during the hack. The folder names appear to contain, among other things, numerous files related to police operations, gang members, and groups conducting operations in Washington.
The ransomware gang warned on its data leak site that the MPD has 3 days to contact them, otherwise the hackers will start contacting gangs to warn them about police informants.
“Hey! Even an institution like DC Police can be threatened, we have downloaded a lot of information from your internal networks and we advise you to contact us as soon as possible to avoid the leak. If we do not receive a response within 3 days, we will start contacting gangs to provide information about informants, we will continue to carry out attacks on the US government sector, FBI-CSA, we will find 0 days before you, and bigger attacks are waiting for you soon,” the Babuk ransomware gang said on the data leak site.
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One of the screenshots includes a timestamp of 4/19/2021 for all the folders, suggesting that the hackers may have stolen the data that day. Additionally, Babuk’s gang specifically pointed out one of the files that, judging by the title, is related to arrests following the January 6th attack on the Capitol.
The Babuk Locker ransomware activity became known in January, when the gang began operating and leaking victims' data on hacking forums. Since then, the gang has been slowly increasing its activity, recruiting more hackers to work with it, while breaching more corporate networks.
Recently, cybersecurity company “Emsisoft” discovered that the gang’s decryptor contained serious bugs that could destroy files during decryption.
Information source: bleepingcomputer.com
