Hackers hit IMF with ‘sophisticated cyberattack’, reports claim

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has suffered a major hack, according to media reports this weekend.

The organisation, already making the headlines following the arrest and resignation of its boss Dominique Strauss-Kahn (whose alleged perpetration of a sexual assault has itself been used as springboard for malware attacks), attempts to oversee financial crises around the world and promote economic development.

According to a New York Times report, senior sources within the IMF confirmed to the newspaper that the organisation had suffered a “very major breach” and was deemed serious enough to cut a computer link between the IMF and its near neighbour in downtown Washington, the World Bank.

A World Bank spokesman is reported by the New York Times to say that the disconnection was taken out of “an abundance of caution” until the nature of the attack…

Read more in my article on the Naked Security website.

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Graham Cluley •   @gcluley

Graham Cluley is a veteran of the anti-virus industry having worked for a number of security companies since the early 1990s when he wrote the first ever version of Dr Solomon's Anti-Virus Toolkit for Windows. Now an independent security analyst, he regularly makes media appearances and is an international public speaker on the topic of computer security, hackers, and online privacy. Follow him on Twitter at @gcluley, on Mastodon at @[email protected], or drop him an email.