14 DAY TRIAL // The International Monetary Fund (IMF) was recently the target of a sophisticated cyber attack in which hackers managed to access sensitive information.
Giving IMF's important role in current and future bailout programs, the non-public data stored on its systems could be very useful to parties trying to predict market movements and plan ahead.
The New York Times broke out the news about the incident on Sunday and reports that the World Bank suspended its computer link with the IMF as a precaution.
According to the newspaper, senior IMF staff were informed about the attack on Wednesday and one official described it as "a very major breach."
It's not clear who and how managed to break in, but Bloomberg quotes an internal email from IMF's chief information officer warning employees of increased phishing activity. IMF staffers were also warned against opening e-mails and video links without authenticating the source.
A likely scenario is that malicious emails sent to employees manged to infect their systems with malware that was later used to access other resources on the network. According to a Bloomberg source, the attackers managed to grab a large quantity of data including documents and emails.
The IMF has been recently struggling to find a new boss after former chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn resigned following sexual assault charges being brought against him in New York.
The cyber attack against the IMF follows several similar attacks against U.S. government contractors and foreign government departments.
Back in March, the networks of the European Commission and the European External Action Service (EEAS) were attacked in advance of a two-day summit about upcoming EU economic strategy.
In February, over 150 computers at the French Ministry of Finance were infected with information stealing malware in advance of the G20 summit.