Hacking News

Mean Hacker Attacks Ecologists

Nature Conservancy employees affected

By Alexandru Dumitru, Security News Editor

3rd of October 2007, 12:46 GMT

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Nothing surprises me anymore. Hackers will just send out viruses wherever they can, reagardless of who they may attack. As the latest cases show, these guys are stooping very low. Such is the case of The Nature Conservancy - after a recent attack on sensitive

info belonging to about 14.000 people had leaked. Naturally, it is suspected that the stolen data will be used for identity theft.

The Nature Conservancy, for those of you who don't know yet, is a conservation organization working around the world to protect ecologically important lands and waters for nature and people. They have more than one million members and protect more than 117 million acres! So, no matter how much good an organization could do to the world, evil hackers will attack them if they find them vulnerable in any way. This is not the first time they shown how ruthless they are!

The hacker used a website to gain access to one of the organization's computers, from which the cyber-criminal stole the data. As seen on the NWAnews website, a spokesman for the Nature Conservancy stated that when the employees accessed a certain website, the page planted a program on the employees' machines that copied the contents of the hard drives and sent the info to the hacker. This sounds like a Trojan to me. A similar one was planted by the RBN on the Bank of India website, some time ago, when the hack occurred.

The stolen data included - but was not limited to - names, addresses, social security numbers and dates of birth, as the same site informs. However, this only affects current and former employees who had worked for the company in the last 7 years. The Nature Conservancy has attended this matter and offered free credit monitoring for the affected ones. Also, each of the 14.000 people has been sent notification via mail and they are also insured for $25.000 against identity theft.

TAGS:

hacker | ecologists | nature | conservancy | data leak

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