World Bank’s sensitive data repeatedly breached?

There are days I wonder if I’m about to join the foil hat club. Today is one of them. With the revelation that the World Bank’s most sensitive data has been accessed by outsiders repeatedly in the last year one can’t help but wonder how that may have impacted the wild gyrations of the financial markets. At the very least, someone should look into what data was retrieved and how it may have been useful in market manipulation. It would also be very useful to secure World Bank’s data. There is clearly a lack of will in the bank’s management to properly secure their systems if they have been repeated and continuously hacked. Heads should roll, and government led investigations should begin immediately. Unfortunately here in the US, our appointed watchdogs led by Chris Dodd, and Barney Frank are busy covering their fingerprints on the present credit crisis and campaigning.

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. (Fox News)