Hackers stole data from UN servers in Europe

Hackers have stolen data from servers at three United Nations locations in Europe. That reports The New Humanitarian. The servers contained personal data of staff members, the site claims.

The UN confirms the hack in the article by The New Humanitarian and says that the hackers have obtained little valuable data. According to an IT manager of one of the affected UN agencies, it concerns 400GB of data and the hackers were able to access much more data.

The attackers used a vulnerability in Microsoft Sharepoint to penetrate. Microsoft and a forensics firm are also involved in clearing the malware. In total there are 42 affected servers and another 25 were ‘suspicious’. Those servers were mainly located at the UN offices in Geneva in Switzerland and Vienna in Austria, but another division of the UN that deals with human rights was also affected.

It’s unknown who’s behind it, but given the complexity of the malware and the targeted attack on a small number of machines, it looks like espionage, according to experts spoke to The New Humanitarian. The UN is not obliged to report data breaches to those affected or governments, says the site, which discovered the hack through an internal report on the incident.