World Bank Under Cybersiege In "Unprecedented Crisis"

JagsLive sends in a Fox News report on large-scale and possibly ongoing security breaches at the World Bank. "The World Bank Group's computer network — one of the largest repositories of sensitive data about the economies of every nation — has been raided repeatedly by outsiders for more than a year, FOX News has learned. 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." Update: 10/11 01:15 GMT by T : Massive spyware infestations might be good cause to reevaluate the TCO of non-Windows systems on the desktop.

Comments

This was bound to happen.

[Anonymous Coward]

These days financial institutions consider IT (and other) security as something that costs them money, without giving them any benefit.

Will this wake them up?

I hear the question "Can we afford"? when talking about security in IT shops. The question that I am coming back with is "Can we afford not to"?

Just how many more banks machines are compromised? How about Federal and Local Government's machines and networks.

If you had enough financial data somebody could cause an economic collapse - I wonder what it would look like.

Re:This was bound to happen.

[g0es]

These days financial institutions consider IT (and other) security as something that costs them money, without giving them any benefit.

Will this wake them up?

I hear the question "Can we afford"? when talking about security in IT shops. The question that I am coming back with is "Can we afford not to"?

Just how many more banks machines are compromised? How about Federal and Local Government's machines and networks.

If you had enough financial data somebody could cause an economic collapse - I wonder what it would look like.

For most financial institutions their primary goal when it comes to information assurance is to pass audits. As you stated security is usually a cost center and they do what ever they can to keep that cost down. This generally means doing just enough work to make them compliant and as well all know, compliant != secure. I do not beleive these incidents will change anything unless the financial institutions are forced to a higher standard. I will continue to hope that they will see the light.

Re:This was bound to happen.

[wkk2]

Why wasn't all traffic limited to white listed addresses and that traffic limited to VPN connections using tamper resistant encryption hardware?

Re:This was bound to happen.

[ScrewMaster]

Because bankers are traditionally among the cheapest bastards on the planet. Rich people frequently are ... it's part of why they got to be rich in the first place. Furthermore, in the modern world the contents of a bank's hard drives are much more valuable than what's in their steel-lined vaults. I don't think they've fully come to grips with that, or they'd have spent more money on information security.

Urgent message to mods re: Satan's rectum

[Anonymous Coward]

It is Satan's rectum, poised over the third-world.

Best slashdot line in ages.

Please, please, please mod parent comment down. The last thing we need is for the phrase "It is Satan's rectum, poised over ..." to become a new Slashdot meme.

I mean can you imagine:

- an item about Linux and posts like "It is Satan's rectum, poised over capitalism";

- an item about fascism and posts like "It is Satan's rectum, poised over our freedoms";

- an item about the Cheney/Bush government and posts like "It is Satan's rectum, poised over privacy and the U.S. Constitution"

- an item about a new Windows version and posts like "It is Satan's rectum, poised over the computer world";

Yech! Please stop it before it starts!