- A laptop belonging to parliamentary aide to mayor Nancy Pelosi was stolen during the siege of the United States Capitol on Wednesday, Raphael Satter of Reuters reported.
- The aide’s laptop – used for presentations – was removed from a conference room, according to a Drew Hammill’s tweet, Pelosi’s deputy chief of staff.
- Democratic Representative Jim Clyburn’s iPad and Democratic Senator Jeff Merkley’s laptop were also stolen during the riots.
- Stolen hardware now poses a major threat to cybersecurity.
- Visit the Business Insider home page for more stories.
A laptop belonging to parliamentary aide to mayor Nancy Pelosi was stolen during the siege of the United States Capitol on Wednesday, Raphael Satter of Reuters reported.
According to a tweet by Drew Hammill, deputy chief of staff to Pelosi, the aide’s laptop – which was “used only for presentations” – was removed from a conference room.
—Drew Hammill (@Drew_Hammill) January 8, 2021
However, the laptop was not the only piece of hardware stolen during historical upheavals. After the siege, Democratic Senator Jeff Merkley of Oregon said in a Twitter video that a laptop he had in his office was stolen by protesters. And on Friday, Democratic Rep. Jim Clyburn of South Carolina also reported a stolen iPad, according to a CNN report.
Read More: The siege of the United States Capitol was a disaster for Congress’ cybersecurity – and experts say Congress will likely have to clean up all its computers and rebuild from scratch.
—Senator Jeff Merkley (@SenJeffMerkley) January 7, 2021
The hooligans had to unlock computers and the hardware stolen after the siege of the Capitol now presents itself as a cybersecurity disaster, experts told Insider on Thursday.
“As soon as intruders have physical access to a system, the game is over,” said Jackie Singh, a security researcher who was a cybersecurity expert for President Elect Joe Biden’s 2020 campaign, to Aaron Holmes of Insider. “The safest thing to do, once you’re out of physical custody, is to clean it up.”