Update 8:30 pm: The police have now confirmed unauthorized access to their server. The FBI is investigating.
The threat actors known as Babuk have added the Metropolitan Police D.C. to their leak site, adding, “We will not comment this time: Even such an organization has huge security gaps, we advise them to get in touch as soon as possible and pay us, otherwise we will publish this data.”
The threat actors, who claim to have exfiltrated more than 250 GB of data, posted a few screen caps of directories and files as proof of claim, one of which appears below:
A spokesperson for the police department informs DataBreaches.net that they are currently investigating the claimed attack.
This is a developing story, and this post will be updated when the department issues an update.
Update 8:25 pm: The Babuk threat actors have now added four more files to their POC. One of them includes a screencap of a directory of disciplinary files where the foldernames include first and last names. A Google search of some of the names indicates that there are real people with those names, but none of them are Metropolitan D.C. police officers. Perhaps the folder names in the disciplinary directory are names of complainants? It is not clear. The threat actors have also expanded their statement to read:
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
DataBreaches.net received the following statement from Hugh Carew, Officer, Public Information Office that indicates that the department is aware that there has been unauthorized access:
We are aware of unauthorized access on our server. While we determine the full impact and continue to review activity, we have engaged the FBI to fully investigate this matter.