Sunday, June 19, 2011

International Monetary Fund warns that ‘sensitive data’ may be compromised after cyber attack by hackers


The International Monetary Fund, which oversees the global financial system and brings together 187 member nations, has become the latest known target of a significant cyber attack.

A cybersecurity expert who has worked for both the Washington-headquartered IMF and the World Bank, its sister institution, said the intruders' goal had been to install software that would give a nation-state a "digital insider presence" on the IMF network.

Such a presence could yield a trove of non-public economic data used by the Fund to promote exchange rate stability, support balanced international trade and provide resources to remedy members' balance-of-payments crises.