Federal Reserve Confirms Anonymous Hack, Critical Operations Not Affected

This past week has been full of hackings of various organizations, and the Federal Reserve is the latest on the list. They have confirmed that they were recently hacked by Anonymous. One of the organization's website was breached, and Anonymous reportedly leaked the contact information of thousands of bankers.

While the bank said that the breach didn't "affect critical operations", the news definitely doesn't make the situation any less worrisome. The bank didn't specifically mention any details, but a spokesperson said that the hacker group got in "by exploiting a temporary vulnerability in a website vendor product...exposure was fixed shortly after discovery and is no longer an issue."

The hackers accessed the St. Louis Fed Emergency Communications System database, which was put in place in 2008, and is used by banking agencies to communicate during an emergency. In total, the system is used by 17 states in the US, with several more to utilize the system sometime this year.

Of course, some are saying that the Federal Reserve is downplaying the severity of the hack on its systems. Sensitive data on more than 4,000 banking officials was compromised, and while the organizations try to minimize the damage of the hack, security experts say that the damage that was already done is bad news and poses serious risks.

[via ZDNet]