p2pnet - rss feed: World Bank ‘deeply penetrated’
p2pnet news view | Security:- “The Fox News story is wrong and is riddled with falsehoods and errors. The story cites misinformation from unattributed sources and leaked emails that are taken out of context.”
Faux News? Rupert Murdoch’s pride and joy wrong and riddled with falsehoods and errors?
Surely not.
The quote comes in the World Bank Group’s response to Fox accusations that the bank has been hacked repeatedly over the past few months.
However, “Like other public and private institutions, the World Bank has repeatedly experienced hacking attacks on its computer systems and is constantly updating its security to defeat these,” says an official comment at the bottom of the very long shock-horror story.
“But at no point has a hacking attack accessed sensitive information in the World Bank’s Treasury, procurement, anti-corruption or human resources departments,” the bank promises.
Meanwhile, according to story, drawn in part from an official World Bank report, “It is still not known how much information was stolen. But sources inside the bank confirm that servers in the institution’s highly-restricted treasury unit were deeply penetrated with spy software last April. Invaders also had full access to the rest of the bank’s network for nearly a month in June and July.
“In total, at least six major intrusions — two of them using the same group of IP addresses originating from China — have been detected at the World Bank since the summer of 2007, with the most recent breach occurring just last month.
“In a frantic midnight e-mail to colleagues, the bank’s senior technology manager referred to the situation as an ‘unprecedented crisis.’ In fact, it may be the worst security breach ever at a global financial institution. And it has left bank officials scrambling to try to understand the nature of the year-long cyber-assault, while also trying to keep the news from leaking to the public.”
But, “We really don’t know at this moment what information was stolen,” Dark Reading has a Sophos technology consultant for Sophos saying.
“It’s just as possible that it was a bunch of college kids breaking into something they shouldn’t be as [it is for] some political or financial motivation. At the same time, economic and financial institutions basically bleed because of a [loss] in confidence and trust.”
And Dave Marcus of McAfee Avert Labs says the idea of an orchestrated attack out of China was “blown out of proportion,” which often is, “the case in other breaches that come from China-based IP addresses,” says the story.
Fox News - World Bank Under Cyber Siege in ‘Unprecedented Crisis’, October 10, 2008
Dark Reading - World Bank Hacked, Sensitive Data Exposed, October 10, 2008
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October 11th, 2008 at 10:38 am
Hmmm, who do we believe. Fox News, or the bank? My vote is with Fox. Sorry Fox haters. I just don’t have much trust for banks at this time.
October 12th, 2008 at 8:12 pm
Fox News = corporate entity.
World Bank = corporate entity.
We have to believe one of these? Why?
October 13th, 2008 at 10:01 am
The World Bank was first penetrated (as in sex) by Wall Street.