Two hackers arrested in Romania are expected in Washington

As it was reported previously, in a joint operation Romania and Europol arrested five people in Bucharest suspected of distributing malware and cyber extortion. Their names were not revealed as part of the on-going investigation. However, today the press managed to find out who two out of five hackers are. This is Mihai Alexandru Isvanca and Eveline Cismaru. They face charges in the United States and the US Justice Department has already confirmed that Isvanca and Cismaru are among those apprehended in Romania, although on other charges, not related to the claims of the American side.

Meanwhile, these claims are very serious. The USA accuses Romanian hackers of infecting 2/3 of the Washington DC Police Department computers with malware early this year. These computers serve to control CCTV cameras that monitor traffic on the streets of the capital city. On January 12th some of these cameras went out of order. During a check, employees of Police Department IT division discovered software on the devices that should not have been there. The worst discovery was ransomware Cerber and Dharma that was sent in masse from police computers in spam emails. It turned out later that 123 out of 187 computers were infected with malware. Investigation of this attack led American law enforcement to hackers from Romania.