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Report: World Bank Servers Breached Repeatedly

Story wrong, riddled 'with falsehoods and errors,' bank says

By Jaikumar Vijayan, Computerworld

The hackers used their access to basically map out the entire system topography, including the types of servers and the types of files on the servers, the Fox report said, quoting an unnamed insider.

The story also contained a link to a purported internal World Bank memo, dated July 10, that appeared to be an update to some staff about the June/July server breach. The memo noted that a "minimum of 18 servers had been compromised in total, including a domain controller, the main authentication server and a Human Resources server containing scanned images of staff documents. In total, five of the compromised servers contained sensitive data, the memo noted. The intrusions appear to have been the work of someone using an senior system's administrator's account to gain access.

The story portrayed the breaches as having triggered an extensive internal investigation by the World Bank's technology group and least two security assessments by external firms.

A spokeswoman at the World Bank asked Computerworld to submit a request for comment via e-mail, but then did not respond to two subsequent messages seeking clarification on the initial news report.

However, in a response apparently sent to Fox News after it ran the story, the bank said the story was wrong and riddled "with falsehoods and errors." It also said the unnamed sources had provided misinformation, and that the leaked e-mails that were linked to the Fox story had been taken out of context.

The World Bank has also sought to downplay the seriousness of the intrusions by saying that it has been repeatedly attacked in the past, but at no point had any sensitive or personnel information been compromised.

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