IMF cyber attack raises major concerns
13 Jun 2011
After the recent instances of cyber attacks on governments and companies, it has now come to light that hackers broke into computers at the International Monetary Fund causing loss of a ''large quantity'' of data, which included documents and e-mails according to a person familiar with the incident.
The security expert declined to be identified as he was not authorised to speak on the subject.
The cyber attack spanned a period of seven months although it was before the organisation's former boss Dominique Strauss-Kahn was arrested for an alleged sexual assault. The FBI is now investigating the sophisticated operation in the US.
This year, websites of the Oak Ridge National Laboratory and Group of 20 have also been attacked.
According to the security expert the intrusion was state-based, though he did not name the government which is thought to be behind it. The Washington-based IMF, which approved a record $91.7 billion in emergency loans last year, provides a third of bailout packages in Europe.
Other security analysts say the value of what was being lost in the cyber-attacks was increasing at a very fast rate and there were two perpetrators that were of the greatest concern - the first being organised crime and the other being nation-states.
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