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IMF: We wuz hacked

Xeni Jardin at 9:19 am Sat, Jun 11, 2011

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The New York Times reports that the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has been hit with what is described as "a large and sophisticated cyberattack whose dimensions are still unknown." The breach happened before the IMF's managing director was accused of trying to rape a hotel worker.
The fund, which manages financial crises around the world and is the repository of highly confidential information about the fiscal condition of many nations, told its staff and its board of directors about the attack on Wednesday. But it did not make a public announcement.

Several senior officials with knowledge of the attack said it was both sophisticated and serious. "This was a very major breach," said one official, who said that it had occurred over the last several months, even before Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the French politician who ran the fund, was arrested on charges of sexually assaulting a chamber maid in a New York hotel.

 
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Boing Boing editor/partner and tech culture journalist Xeni Jardin hosts and produces Boing Boing's in-flight TV channel on Virgin America airlines (#10 on the dial), and writes about living with breast cancer. Diagnosed in 2011. @xeni on Twitter. email: xeni@boingboing.net.

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  • Teller

    Only the Tea Party dislikes the IMF more.

  • Cowicide

    Couldn’t of happened to better people.

  • subhan

    I hope to see a wikileaks release on THAT download soon!

  • Anonymous

    The IMF are a pack of monsters. If it turns out Anonymous is behind this, I promise to support them by purchasing a 4chan Gold account.

    • zanbowser

      Why go Gold when you could go Bismuth?!

      Open a 4Chan Bismuth account today!

      Also: go, LulzBoat; go!

  • Anonymous

    Don’t tell me anyone *believes* this attempt to change the subject.

    Nothing to see here.

  • brillow

    $10 says the “large and sophisticaed” attack was caused by some unpatched SQL.

  • phisrow

    Interesting… I wonder if some lucky voters are going to get access to that “highly confidential information about the fiscal condition” of their respective nations, or if some sort of sleazy debt-arbitrage firm has black-hatted it up of late?

  • zapan

    Mon Dieu ! C’est une conspiration !

  • or420

    The “large and sophisticated cyberattack” was probably someone opened an attachment in a random email. Or clicked the “You need Flash to play this video. Click here to download Flash.” messages on a random website. Or something else similarly basic. In a world where RSA got hacked through a malicious Excel file, truly large and sophisticated attacks are few and far between.

  • emmdeeaych

    Large and Sophisticated…. sort of like the proscriptions the IMF gives to poor nations. :)

  • Anonymous

    The Lulzboat is sailing :) I cant wait to read some of that wonderful news. Maybe some more people will wake up and crush these power hungry, greed filled scum. We need numbers and we need to stop this economical tyranny. Slavery isnt gone in America, they just changed the name to DEBT and now everyones fucked.

  • Anonymous

    The fund, which manages financial crises around the world…

    That’s a funny way to put it…

    • CastanhasDoPara

      It sure is.

      FWIW, I always thought SAP was a rather odd acronym as well.

  • ukcannonfodder

    oh dear well they better make the internet safe like propaganda mainstream TV & rid it with sites like wikileaks, collateral murder, presstv, democracy now!

    the IMF, WTO, IMF, World bank are US organisation that steal resources & land.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g1HYcG41xq8

  • shannigans

    Nelson- “Ha Ha!”

  • Anonymous

    Cry me a f*cking river.