UN investigates hack

The United Nations has said it will investigate an attack after a group of hackers posted more than 100 email addresses and login details it claimed to have stolen from the organisation.

According to BBC News, many of the emails appear to belong to members of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), a spokesperson for which said that an old server had been targeted.

Sausan Ghosheh said: “The UNDP found [the] compromised server and took it offline. The server goes back to 2007. There are no active passwords listed for those accounts. Please note that UNDP.org was not compromised.”

Hacking group TeaMp0isoN claimed responsibility for the action, calling the UN "a senate for global corruption" and criticised its stance and action in Rwanda, Darfour, Israel and the former Yugoslavia.

The group told SC Australia it would not release details of the affected server to minimise impact to the UN.

It did not respond to further requests to discuss the exploit used to obtain the details.

Emails sent by sister site ITNews to Australian government agency addresses listed in the breach had bounced.

Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant at Sophos, suspected that the hackers were able to take advantage of a vulnerability on the UNDP website to extract the information.

“The UN has said that the information exposed is old data, but if you look at the YouTube video released by the hackers on Monday, it shows account details and usernames as well as personal email addresses.