Hackers Attack Swiss Foreign Ministry, Guardian's Jobs Webpage
From the hacking news section, we have two interesting tales for you. The first one comes from Switzerland, the land o chocolate, Swiss cheese, cuckoo clock, Roger Federer and hacker attacks on the Foreign Ministry. Wait, what was that last one? It would appear that hackers managed to penetrate the Swiss Foreign Ministry’s computer system last week.
According to spokesperson Georg Farago, the goal of this hacker attack was to obtain information from the ministry’s network. Once the attack was discovered, the connection to the internet was cut off. It is yet unclear what information the hackers tried to get their hands on. Specialists are currently trying to find out if the hackers managed to steal information from the ministry’s network. They are also trying to determine the source of the attack.
Hackers are up to no good in other parts of the world. In England for example, the jobs webpage of the Guardian newspaper was hacked into – data belonging to about 500,000 users was exposed. It is yet unclear what type of data has been compromised by the attack. The affected users have been contacted by newspaper representatives to inform them about the security breach.
“The police remain anxious to keep information about the apparent theft to a minimum, in order not to compromise their investigations, but did agree with us that we could inform those users who may be affected. We stress our regret that this breach has occurred. This is apparently a deliberate and sophisticated crime, of which the Guardian is a victim in addition to some of our users. We have emailed the approximately half a million users whose data may have been compromised. This is out of the total of 10,328,290 unique users the site has per calendar year,” commented the Guardian.
Only the UK Guardian Jobs site was affected; the Guardian’s US webpage remained untouched.
According to spokesperson Georg Farago, the goal of this hacker attack was to obtain information from the ministry’s network. Once the attack was discovered, the connection to the internet was cut off. It is yet unclear what information the hackers tried to get their hands on. Specialists are currently trying to find out if the hackers managed to steal information from the ministry’s network. They are also trying to determine the source of the attack.
Hackers are up to no good in other parts of the world. In England for example, the jobs webpage of the Guardian newspaper was hacked into – data belonging to about 500,000 users was exposed. It is yet unclear what type of data has been compromised by the attack. The affected users have been contacted by newspaper representatives to inform them about the security breach.
“The police remain anxious to keep information about the apparent theft to a minimum, in order not to compromise their investigations, but did agree with us that we could inform those users who may be affected. We stress our regret that this breach has occurred. This is apparently a deliberate and sophisticated crime, of which the Guardian is a victim in addition to some of our users. We have emailed the approximately half a million users whose data may have been compromised. This is out of the total of 10,328,290 unique users the site has per calendar year,” commented the Guardian.
Only the UK Guardian Jobs site was affected; the Guardian’s US webpage remained untouched.
