WHO, Wuhan Institute data hacked

The digital data of World Health Organization, the Wuhan Institute of Virology, the Gates Foundation and other institutes working on the novel coronavirus pandemic have been hacked, with thousands of their emails, passwords and documents getting leaked online.

According to the SITE Intelligence Group, which monitors terror groups online, hackers shared around 25,000 email addresses and their passwords of the groups which are at the forefront of the war against the global pandemic.

Many screenshots of the documents, emails and their passwords were posted on Twitter too. The data was leaked on Sunday and Monday.

The Maryland-based SITE said the National Institute of Health (NIH) was the biggest victim of hacking with 9,938 emails and passwords posted online. As many as 6,857 emails and passwords of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 5,120 of the World Bank and 2,732 of WHO were also leaked.

The Gates Foundation, the private philanthropic group of Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, and the Wuhan Institute of Virology in Wuhan city in China from where the novel coronavirus pandemic originated, were also targeted by the hackers.

However, the SITE was unable to verify whether the email addresses and passwords were authentic. An Australian cybersecurity expert, Robert Potter, claimed that he was able to verify if the WHO email addresses and passwords were real.

Rita Katz, SITE's Executive Director, said, "Neo-Nazis and white supremacists capitalised on the lists and published them aggressively across their venues."